VISION 
AND RESTR AINT 

ROBERT L.JACKSON 




LIBRARY OF RELIGIOUS THOUGHT 



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COPXRIGHT DEPOSm 



VISION AND 
RESTRAINT 



BY 



ROBERT L. JACKSON 




BOSTON: RICHARD G. BADGER 

The Copp Clark Co., Limited, Toronto 



Copyright, 1916, by Robert L. Jackson 



All Rights Reserved 



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MADE IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA 
The Gorham Press, Boston, U. S. A. 



rORHAM J 



OCT 25 1916 



CI.A446071 



To B. P. J. 

This book is affectionately inscribed. 



PREFACE 

The malady of the age is immoderation. 
The modem man is a study in extravagance 
and excess. In his determination to achieve 
his ambitions and gratify his desires, he goes, 
until he is ready to drop. His permanent 
residence, therefore, is the ragged edge. 
He ever dwells not far from the bank- 
ruptcies which inevitably overtake all prodi- 
gals. He has failed to master the first 
secret of right living, namely, self-restraint. 
Nor will he ever master it, until he changes 
the habitation of his spirit from the material 
world to the spiritual. Becoming an inhabit- 
ant of the spiritual world, instead of the ma- 
terial, spiritual values will be sought in place 
of material, with the result that the rhythm 
of his life will more and more harmonize 
with the rhythm of the life of the Eternal. 

This little book is an appeal to the men 
and women of today to change the residence 
of their spirits, from the hurly-burly of the 
material realm, to the quiet and calm of the 

5 



6 PREFACE 

immaterial. It bids them make the values of 
the latter, the supreme end of all their striv- 
ing. It summons them back to that restful 
sanity and quietness to which the multitudes 
in their fierce desire to be rich and powerful 
are strangers. 

As never before, it is being born in upon 
our souls that it is not in the power of material 
achievements and acquisitions to make us con- 
tented. It is only too apparent that with every 
new possession, there is kindled a consuming 
passion for more. It thus transpires, that the 
world seething with unappeasable desire for 
increased material goods, is transformed into 
one vast scene of savage strife. This is the 
lesson of the great European war. Some one 
has well said, that events are God speaking in 
emphasis. This event now shaking the whole 
world to its foundations, is God very emphati- 
cally saying to us, that so long as men make 
material possessions and territorial dominion, 
the be-all and end-all of their activities, strife 
and bloodshed will be their lot upon earth. 
In vain will arbitration endeavor to do its 
office. Wars and rumors of war will never 
cease. Preparedness for war will ever be 



PREFACE 7 

necessary. God grant that the lesson of this 
terrible war may not be lost upon us and that 
we may speedily realize that our well-being as 
nations and individuals lies not in material 
goods and political power, but in those im- 
perishable realities which enrich our inner 
spiritual lives. The author is sending forth 
this little work in the hope that it may find 
a place among those books to which an in- 
creasing number of men and women are 
turning for inspiration and guidance in this 
critical hour of the world's history. 

Robert L. Jackson. 
July I, 19 1 6, 

Wilmington, Delaware. 



CONTENTS 

Introduction ii 

Part I 

I. The Vision of God. ... ., ... 25 

II. The Vision of Man. . 44 

III. The Vision of a Moral Order 57 

Part II 
The Casting off of Restraint 71 

Part III 
Recovering the Vision. 93 

Part IV 
The Dawn of a New Day. ........ .,. .121 



INTRODUCTION 

NO pronouncements on human life 
are truer to the experience of the 
race than the short, crisp sayings 
which make up the Book of Prov- 
erbs. In all ages, their truth finds abundant 
authentication in national and individual life. 
Of none of them is this more true than the 
one which reads, ^Where there is no vision, 
the people cast off restraint." Proverbs 29, 
18, (R. V.) In every period of the world's 
history, the absence of what the proverbialist 
calls 'Vision" leads to the casting off of re- 
straint. No time is lost in giving a loose rein 
to impulse and desire. Humours hitherto 
held in subjection are immediately elevated to 
sovereignty. Time-honored customs are flout- 
ed into desuetude. Ancient and honorable 
laws are escorted to the limbo of things dis- 
carded. Immemorial sanctities are thrust 
aside as silly supersitions. Pledges are break- 
able at pleasure. Treaties are only scraps of 
paper. Conduct is an affair of go-as-you- 

II 



1 2 VISION AND RESTRAINT 

please. Life resolves itself into a riot of ruth- 
less egoism. History becomes a huddle of 
chaotic occurrences, a tale of anarchy signify- 
ing the reckless unleashing of the human pas- 
sions. 

The history of the Jewish People impres- 
sively illustrates the truth of this proverb. 
In the Eighth century before Christ, there was 
no vision in Israel. As a consequence, there 
was a general casting off of restraint. An- 
imalism was given full swing. Strong drink 
was followed from early morning until late 
at night. Adultery was general, and a spirit 
of harlotry was in the land. Theft abounded, 
perjury prevailed, oath-breaking was com- 
mon, and murders in high places and in low 
were of daily occurrence. The poor suffered 
oppression at the hands of the rich. The 
weak were crushed by the strong. It was 
every man for himself and the devil take the 
hindmost. George Adam Smith, in describ- 
ing the appalling chaos which confronted the 
prophet Hosea, says : ^'There is stumbling and 
clashing; crowds in drift; confused rallies; 
gangs of assassins breaking across the high- 
ways ; doors opening upon lurid interiors full 



INTRODUCTION 13 

of drunken riot.'' Again says Dr. Smith: 
**A king surrounded by loose and unscrupu- 
lous nobles: adultery, drunkenness, conspir- 
acies, assassinations; every man striking for 
himself; none appealing to God. From the 
court, then, downwards, by princes, priests and 
prophets, to the common Fathers of Israel and 
their households, immorality prevails." None 
too strong and sweeping are his words in the 
light of Hosea's scathing indictment. *'Hear 
the word of Jehovah, sons of Israel ! Jehovah 
hath a quarrel with the inhabitants of the 
land, for there is no trouth nor leal love nor 
knowledge of God in the land. Perjury and 
murder and theft and adultery! They break 
out, and blood strikes upon blood. Gilead is 
a city of evil doers: stamped with bloody 
footprints; assassins in troops; a gang of 
priests murder on the way to Shechem. Yea, 
crime they have done. In the house of Israel 
I have seen horrors: there Ephraim hath 
played the harlot : Israel is defiled — Judah as 
well." The author of our proverb could have 
had no other people in mind when he wrote 
it, than the Israel of the Eighth century. Their 
uncurbed conduct expressing itself in every 



14 VISION AND RESTRAINT 

breach of law possible to man, springs from 
the absence of vision. 

Roman history furnishes another illustra- 
tion of the truth embodied in this proverb, 
quite as impressive. The Roman people, until 
they embraced Christianity, were destitute of 
vision. The consequence was, they were 
strangers to restraint. Every animal excess 
imaginable abounded. Lust recognized no 
limit to its exactions and showed no mercy 
to its victims. Men and women went to the 
lowest depths of depravity in their quest of 
pleasure. They compassed the utmost of 
cruelty in their exploitation of their fellow- 
men. In their insane thirst for excitement 
they committed the direst horrors which men 
in their wildest dreams can conceive. Men 
were dropped into cages of devouring beasts; 
naked women were bound by their hair to 
the horns of wild bulls ; seamen were compell- 
ed to engage in desperate battle with one an- 
other, all to gratify the lust of the people for 
amusement. Add to their savage sensuality 
and their sensual savagery, their insatiable 
avarice. An insatiate, all-absorbing greedi- 
ness actuated them in all their wars. It was 



INTRODUCTION 15 

not for honor's sake that they waged war, 
but for the sake of territory and treasure. 
The traffic in human beings also had its roots 
in the passion for wealth. The rich often 
possessed as many as twenty thousand slaves 
apiece. In Rome at the close of the pre- 
christian era, there were two slaves for one 
freeman. In the majority of instances they 
were treated no better than beasts; in some 
cases infinitely worse. Glancing at society 
as a whole, we note that restraint is con- 
spicuous for its absence. The ''abysses of 
depravity, the hideous and intolerable cruelty, 
the hitherto unimagined extravagances of 
nameless lust" which characterized the life of 
the Roman people are a lurid testimony to the 
disappearance of the last vestige of self-dis- 
cipline and self-control. 

The history of the Italians in the Fifteenth 
century affords us another authentication of 
the truth of this proverb. The Italians were 
a people devoid of vision. Their lives were 
consequently characterized by the abence of 
restraint. Says Villari, in his Life and Times 
of Savonarola, in speaking of the social con- 
dition of Florence in Lorenzo's day : ''Artists, 



1 6 VISION AND RESTRAINT 

men of letters, statesmen, nobles and peopL 
were all equally corrupt in mind, devoid o: 
public or private virtue, devoid of all mora 
sense." In describing Lorenzo, the Magnifi 
cent, Villari says: '*He was alike regardlesi 
of honesty and honor, respected no conditioi 
of men; went straight to his ends tramplinj 
over all considerations whether human o 
divine. . . . He encouraged all thi 
worst tendencies of the age and multiplied it 
corruptions. Abandoned to pleasure himself 
he urged the people to lower depths of aban 
donment in order to plunge them in thi 
lethargy of intoxication. In fact, during hi 
reign Florence was a continuous scene o 
revelry and dissipation." What could be ex 
pected of the people when, as in the days o 
Hosea, the upper classes were shamelessl 
incontinent in their conduct. Not alone th 
princes of the realm, but the priests also fron 
the Supreme Pontiff down, were without seli 
control. In one of his Lenten sermons ii 
1497, Savonarola lashes the priests in un 
sparing terms. ''The earth teems with blood 
shed," he cried, ''yet the priests take no heed 
rather by their evil example, they bring spirit 



INTRODUCTION 17 

ual death upon all. They have withdrawn 
from God, and their piety consists in spend- 
ing their nights with harlots and their days 
in chattering in choirs." All classes seem to 
be infected with the taint of immorality. All 
considerations of purity, uprightness and 
honor are shamelessly overridden in their 
wild, ungovernable desire to gratify the basest 
propensities of their beings. Rudolph Eucken 
truly observes, **the moral atmosphere of the 
Renaissance is unclean through and through, 
and not all the beauty and purity of its artistic 
productions can in the end conceal, even from 
itself, the moral abyss which threatens to 
engulf it." The great outstanding fact of 
the age of Lorenzo, the Magnificent, and 
Alexander, the Sixth, is the unbridled reign 
of the lusts of the flesh, and the reckless, ruth- 
less overriding of all scruples of honor and 
all considerations of humanity in order to gain 
their gratification. 

Coming down to the beginning of the 
Eighteenth century, we find the truth of this 
proverb again strikingly illustrated. The 
people of England in this period were with- 
out vision. Says Dr. Fitchett in his Wesley 



1 8 VISION AND RESTRAINT 

and his Century : ^'England's spiritual skies 
were black as with the gloom of an arctic 
midnight and chilly as with arctic frosts." 
What wonder that restraint is wanting, that 
the literature of the period is coarse and 
obscene, and the laws cruel and barbarous, 
and the conduct of the people unclean. ''There 
was" says Green, the historian, ''open revolt 
against religion and against churches in both 
extremes of society. The poor were ignorant 
and brutal to a degree impossible now to 
realize ; the rich to an almost utter unbelief of 
religion linked a foulness of life now happily 
almost inconceivable." When John Wesley 
appeared on the scene, he found his work 
clearly mapped out for him. There lay be- 
fore him the task of "stamping out vice, sup- 
pressing drink and debauchery and of show- 
ing men the plain path to heaven." In short, 
it was his task to restore to men the vision 
they had lost, and by so doing, to bring to so- 
ciety the restraint which had been cast off. 
Thanks to the new vision England won, she 
was saved from the terrible forces which 
strove with such demonic fury in the French 
Revolution. The "red fool fury of the Seine" 



INTRODUCTION 19 

never touched her shores. No reign of terror 
held paralyzing sway in the streets of her 
metropolis. 

While England was by peaceful means 
striving to free herself from the toils of the 
ancient regime, to usher in a new era of jus- 
tice and humanity, France was in the throes 
of a tremendous and far-reaching Revolution. 
It is a fact of impressive significance that 
during this great upheaval, the French were 
a people without vision. What could be ex- 
pected under the circumstances but the tur- 
bulence and bloodshed which lent such horror 
to the history of the period. Anything sav- 
ouring of self-restraint was universally lack- 
ing. The faintest semblance of law and or- 
der during certain stages of the Titanic 
tragedy was missing. Carlyle paints for us 
picture after picture exhibiting the infernal 
lawlessness, the fiendish anarchy of the Rev- 
olutionists. ^'Guillotining there was at Nan- 
tes, till the headsman sank worn out; then 
fusillading in the plain of Saint Mauve ; little 
children fusilladed and women with children 
at the breast; children and women by the 
hundred and twenty ; and by the five hundred 



20 VISION AND RESTRAINT 

so hot is La Vendee, till the very Jacobins 
grew sick and all but the company of Marat 
cried *Hold.' " Granted the Revolution was 
fruitful in results which the world sorely 
needed, the whole terrible drama is a monu- 
mental witness to the spirit of anarchy which 
develops in a society which is destitute of 
vision. 

Coming to our own age, we are confronted 
with phenomena which are explicable on no 
other ground than that it, in common with 
the ages we have passed in review, is without 
vision. The present age is a substantial im- 
provement upon all that have preceded it in 
many and most vital respects, but in the matter 
of lack of vision and consequent lack of re- 
straint, it bears marked resemblance to the 
ones we have been considering. The domin- 
ant note of the present age is the demand of 
men to think and act as they choose. Any 
interference without is treated as an attack 
upon their personal rights, an attempt to 
abridge their liberties. That they should ex- 
ercise any self-restraint in the pursuit of 
wealth or pleasure is a puerile proposition. 
Their instincts and appetites were given them 



INTRODUCTION 2 1 

for gratification, and society has no right to 
call a halt upon them at any stage of the 
process. Says Harold Begbie in his Crisis of 
Morals : '^Political individualism and even re- 
ligious individualism seem to be working 
themselves out, but moral individualism is 
thrusting itself into a vigorous existence. Men 
and women publicly justify conduct which has 
incurred the censure of mankind for thou- 
sands of years, and the most advanced of our 
modern writers preach the gospel that every 
man should do what he wants to do, that re- 
sistance to natural impulse is nothing more 
than timidity; the spirit of the age is a spirit 
of liberty without restraint, egoism without 
conscience, life without God." Again he says : 
''Look where you will, the spirit of I, Myself, 
is paramount, life exists for Me : all the dim 
eons behind have toiled to produce Me : this 
brief moment in the eternal duration of time 
is only an opportunity for my pleasure and my 
ease : I care not a jot for the ages ahead and 
the sons of men who shall inhabit the earth 
when I am dust beneath their feet. Give me 
my rights. Stand clear of my way; I want 
and I wiU have/' In his inaugural address, 



22 VISION AND RESTRAINT 

the Governor of New York, Charles S. Whit- 
man, said : '^Disregard of law, impatience with 
legal and moral restraints, contempt for the 
judicial and the executive ministers of justice 
are phenomena observable in all Ameri- 
can communities and all classes." It is the 
almost unanimous conviction of the shrewdest 
observers of our ways and works that we are 
lamentably wanting in restraint. In the fol- 
lowing pages I shall consider this condition 
which confronts us and its underlying cause. 
In Part One I shall deal with the vision which 
we have lost. Part Two will be devoted to 
the consequences of this loss. Part Three 
will treat of the ways whereby the lost vision 
may be recovered, and the fourth and con- 
cluding part will unfold the results consequent 
upon its recovery. 



PART ONE 



Vision and Restraint 



THE VISION OF GOD 

VISION is a word which does not 
appeal to the average modern 
man. It is too suggestive of the 
unreal and the unearthly. It is 
the airy nothing seen by moonstruck mystics, 
the fabulous presentment vouch-safed to 
ecstatic solitaries. It is as far from the actual 
as the east is from the west. Visions suggest 
eyes vacated by earthly longings and taken 
possession of by chimerical fabrications, eyes 
closed to the revelations of honest daylight 
and opened to the metamorphosis of delusive 
moonlight. They call up the cell of the silent 
monk, the hermitage of the shy recluse, the 
haunt of the dreamy poet. Men whose see- 
ings are of this ethereal sort are not kindly 
considered by the practical type of person. 
They are regarded as mooning mortals who 

25 



26 VISION AND RESTRAINT 

contribute nothing substantial to the world's 
vital ongoing. They grow no corn; mine no 
ore; manufacture no cloth; run no bank; buy 
and sell no stock. In short, they play no part 
in the world's tense and telling life. They are 
not in the stream of affairs contributing to its 
velocity and volume. What wonder the man 
of today in the thick of life, at the focus of 
its fiercest rush and onset should shrug his 
shoulders when visions and visionaries are 
mentioned, as much as to say '^nonsense." To 
him, visions are the veriest bosh and vision- 
aries are insufferable nuisances. In all fair- 
ness it must be said that such feelings are not 
illfounded if a vision is in reality only an 
airy nothing, and a visionary is only the author 
of the same. A valid complaint may be lodg- 
ed against visionaries whose visions admit of 
no translation into actuality, whose aerial 
castles cannot be done into tangible structures, 
whose air-drawn daggers cannot be used as 
weapons with which to deal death to the 
forces of evil. Visionaries whose visions do 
not tell on the world's vital life may be voted 
out of the ranks of the tolerable. But such 
treatment would deprive us of only a portion 



THE VISION OF GOD 27 

of those who go by the name. There are 
men who offer the world visions of incalcuable 
value. Endowed with sight which penetrates 
to the core of Reality, which envisages its 
multitudinous potentialities and the processes 
necessary to their realization, they perform an 
invaluable office for society and are worthy 
of the highest recognition and appreciation. 
In this class are those who see Life crowding 
the world with creations where others see 
only vacuity. They see blooming gardens, 
where others see only parched deserts. They 
see populous cities, where others see onl} 
straggling villages. They see mighty nations, 
where others see only struggling colonies. 
But it is not merely the material aspect of life 
which they see. They see more than possible 
nations, cities and gardens: they see Life's 
creative possibilities in the moral and spiritual 
world; they see a world of evil and in- 
humanity, of discord and woe made over into 
an habitation of goodness and love, harmony 
and happiness; they see the world's highest 
inhabitant, man, evolving a richer and nobler 
life with the process of the suns, a life char- 



28 VISION AND RESTRAINT 

acterized by the play of larger powers and the 
achievement of finer ends; they see man stead- 
ily advancing toward his goal of perfect god- 
likeness. Such visions are possible to them be 
cause they see high above the play of material 
forces, the operation of forces that are spirit- 
ual. They see at work upon the soul of man 
the energies of divine holiness and goodness. 
They see striving in the process of humanity's 
advance, the power of infinite love. They 
behold controlling and guiding the whole 
drama of creation, and bringing it stage after 
stage to its final denouement, an all power- 
ful and good God. Visionaries of this sort 
are among the world's greatest benefactors. 
They, too, may grow no actual harvests. They, 
too, may do no mining or manufacturing, no 
buying and selling, but by seeing Life's mani- 
fold possibilities, by seeing to what great 
heights Life is capable of attaining in the 
achievements of humanity, by seeing the god- 
likeness which the race is destined to realize 
in the long reach of time, and by holding aloft 
before human eyes these sublime visions, they 
help keep the souls of men alive and lure them 
forward toward the goals of God. 



THE VISION OF GOD 29 

Such visionaries are not lacking today, al- 
though their number is not overwhelmingly 
large. However large or small their number 
may be, compared with the number of such in 
the days gone by, the twentieth century can 
boast of visionaries whose visions are an in- 
spiration to noble, exalted achievement, to all 
who permit them to come within their ken. 
We have men who have caught a glimpse of 
the vast designs of Life, and of its mighty 
strivings toward their realization. They pos- 
sess a vision of the humanity that is to be, 
the consummation of Life's final purpose and, 
so far as in them lies, they endeavor to hold it 
before the eyes of their fellowmen. But how 
few there are who see what is thus held up 
to their gaze ! How few give any heed to the 
visions of the seers of our time 1 But this is 
not strange considering the ways and tempers 
of modern men. It is an age of touch and go. 
A Vision which upraises men to lofty levels of 
thought and action cannot be taken in on the 
run. There must be long and uninterrupted 
exposure of the soul to it, before a lasting 
impression is made. Time is an indispensable 
factor in enabling a vision to sink deep into a 



30 VISION AND RESTRAINT 

human soul and saturate it with its quicken- 
ing splendors. Again, the fierce practicalism 
of the age militates against the vision's success 
with the modern man. Visions which suggest 
other than material values feebly impress the 
many. A vision which is not a prospectus 
of a labor saving device, or wealth producing 
machine, is given scant attention. It must 
promise to fill empty coffers, to catch and hold 
the gaze of men. In a time when men want 
ideas and inspirations that can be turned at 
once into cold cash, visions that look toward 
unmarketable values are accorded little con- 
sideration. The age because of its touch-and- 
go ways and its materialistic utilitarian tem- 
pers, is visionless. The visions are here to be 
seen, but there are no eyes to behold them. 
Men are blind to the great elemental visions 
that pour their awesome, arresting splendors 
into the eyes of the openminded and pure- 
hearted, and incite them to endeavor for the 
world's true betterment and their own high 
wellbeing. 

Among the visions we have lost, the vision 
of God stands first and foremost. We do 
not see the living God. We see everything in 



THE VISION OF GOD 3 1 

the heavens above, and the earth beneath, and 
the waters under the earth. We have sharp 
eyes for the world about us. We do not 
miss its changing phenomena, its shifting 
panoramas, its endless comedies and trage- 
dies, its lights and shadows, its rush and re- 
pose. We have eager, absorbing eyes for all 
that it offers, of success and failure, joy and 
sorrow, life and death, but we have no eyes 
for God. We do not see Him in the exhibi- 
tions of His power, in the manifestations of 
His goodness and the operations of His grace. 
God's self-revelations are unseen by the men 
of this age. In His sermon on the Mount, 
our Lord declared that purity of heart is 
essential to a vision of God. If we have no 
vision of God, is it not because our hearts are 
impure ? As a matter of fact, are they not im- 
pure? Aire they not filled with manifold im- 
purities, such as lustful longings, worldly am- 
bitions, revengeful feelings and covetous de- 
sires ? How can men see the holy and loving 
God when their hearts hold thoughts and im- 
pulses utterly at variance with His character 
and spirit ? Only they behold the holy Father 



32 VISION AND RESTRAINT 

God whose hearts are filled with God's holy 
love. The vision of Him who is all pure, is for 
those who are pure even as he is pure. In his 
second letter to the Corinthians, St. Paul says: 
''But and if our gospel is veiled, it is veiled in 
them that are perishing, in whom the God of 
this world hath blinded the minds of the un- 
believing that the light of the gospel of the 
glory of Christ who is the image of God, 
should not dawn upon them." With minds 
bent upon riches and power, with hearts solely 
intent upon securing a "place in the sun," a 
moral and spiritual blindness ensues which 
makes a vision of God and the things of God 
impossible. 

We do not see God in His self-revelations 
in the world of nature. We do not see nature 
as the glorious vesture of the Deity, as the 
medium through which he displays His power 
and achieves His purposes. Most limited is 
the tendency to associate nature with the om- 
nipotent and omnipresent God. The pre- 
vailing tendency is to associate it with con- 
siderations of utility, with processes of in- 
dustry and commerce, with wealth, and 
wealth-producing operations. To illustrate: 



THE VISION OF GOD 33 

the mountain, instead of speaking to us of the 
everlastingness of God, speaks to us of ore 
deposits. It is eloquent of silver and gold. 
It has nothing to say of the immutable pillars 
of righteousness upon which the universe 
rests. The ocean suggests a highway for the 
great ships that ply between the nations of the 
world. It does not suggest the unfathom- 
able deep of the divine mind, the measureless 
expanse of the divine heart. The mighty 
cataract means to most men dynamic energy 
for turning the wheels of industry, and not the 
thunder of God's power. The marvelous suc- 
cess which has attended the efforts of the 
scientist and inventor to harness the elements 
to the tasks of theworkaday world, has tended 
to draw men's thoughts away from nature as 
a medium through which God reveals Himself, 
and to fix them upon it as a medium through 
which men are enabled to achieve self-aggran- 
dizing material ends. Those who see in nature 
the shining foot-prints of deity, who see in its 
splendors in sky and sea and earth something 
of the glory of the ineffable God, who ex- 
claim with the poet. 



34 VISION AND RESTRAINT 

'*The sun, the moon, the stars, the seas, the 

hills, and the plains 
Are not these O soul the vision of Him who 

reigns." 

are considered and called vaporing sentimen- 
talists. ^'Nature," says John Borroughs'^is only 
a mine to be worked and to be through with, 
a stream to be fished, a tree to be shaken, a 
field to be gleaned." It is no longer what it 
was to the Psalmist who cried : *'The heavens 
declare the glory of God and the firmament 
showeth His handiwork." It has ceased to 
be the revelation of a divine power and beauty 
too great for the poet's pen, and the painter's 
brush, and the orator's tongue to adequately 
express. 

Again we do not see God in the revelation 
He has made of Himself in the being and 
character of man. The true Shekinah of God, 
we are told. Is man. Man unfolding the high 
possibilities of his being, charactering him- 
self after Jesus Christ, the model of all man- 
kind, becomes, indeed, a true Shekinah of the 
Infinite. Many factors operate to obscure our 
vision of man as an organ of God's self- 



THE VISION OF GOD 35 

revelation. There is first, the old dogma of 
man's vileness and worthlessness, which has 
so long disgraced our theology and hymn- 
ology. Theologians have apparently gloried 
in heaping upon humanity the most villifying 
epithets. Hymnologists have caused men to 
sing of the wormlike worthlessness of man- 
kind time out of mind, until it is a wonder 
there is any belief in human goodness left in 
the Christian Church. Add to this a factor 
peculiarly potent in its workings at the present 
time, namely, the habit of seeing nothing in 
men of value except the service they can 
render society in the creation of material 
wealth. To men keenly and ruthlessly on the 
make, a fellow-man suggests another hand in 
the shop, another clerk in the office. It never 
occurs to them to think that he is another 
revelation of God. As touching the glory of 
God in man, the eyes of the men of this age 
are holden and therefore it is undiscerned. 
In obscure and lowly men and women toiling 
and moiling at homely tasks, God unveils the 
glory of his character. In their unnoticed 
braveries, their silent fidelities, in the quiet un- 
complaining manner in which they meet life's 



36 VISION AND RESTRAINT 

losses and disasters, and in the noble and gen- 
erous way in which they succor the woeful and 
the distressed, they disclose the divine like- 
ness in which they are created. Passing from 
the ranks of the common and ordinary, as we 
are wont to call them, to the uncommon and 
extraordinary, how many there are in whom 
the splendors of Godhood are revealed. In 
the great souls of the race, who have been 
sublimed and uplifted by great dreams and 
visions, whose lips have been touched to 
strains of burning eloquence, whose lives have 
held heroic sacrifices for the cause of truth, 
righteousness and humanity, God has unveil- 
ed the splendors of His being. In an Abra- 
ham Lincoln affixing his signature to the 
Proclamation, in a Harriet Beecher Stowe 
writing her Uncle Tom's Cabin, in a Wendell 
Philips pleading the cause of the downtrodden, 
and in a Florence Nightingale singing for 
God and the uplift of her fellowmen, we have 
Godhood made clearly visible to us. The 
dying Bunsen exclaimed to his wife as she 
bent over him: '^I have seen the Eternal in 
thy face." Who has not seen the eternal in 
the countenances of these great ones of earth 



THE VISION OF GOD 37 

championing the right, succoring the distress- 
ed, lifting up the fallen, following with un- 
wearied hearts the vision splendid, the guid- 
ing star of God calling human mortals to 
heights of moral heroism and spiritual devo- 
tion? 

But while God makes Himself known 
through those who seek to do his will, who 
hunger after righteousness and truth, it is in 
Jesus Christ that He reveals Himself most 
clearly and completely. Jesus Christ is God 
manifest in the flesh in a unique, incomparable 
and unsharable manner. '^He that hath seen 
me hath seen the Father also. I and my Father 
are one." These are Christ's own utterances 
in regard to Himself. They are affirmations 
of His essential Godhood. 

In Christ, we have a revelation of God's 
holiness. Holiness, we are told, is a term 
which covers the impressions which God 
makes on man as a sinner. There is no other 
word which is so completely expressive of the 
impression which Christ makes upon sinful 
men, as this word holiness. It has been said 
that the sinlessness of Jesus cannot be elevat- 
ed to a dogma. Be this as it may, it is im- 



38 VISION AND RESTRAINT 

possible to ascribe sin to Him. 'T find no 
fault in Him'' was the verdict of Pilate, on 
concluding his examination of Jesus. ''Which 
of you convinceth me of sin?" is the Gali- 
lean's challenge to His critics. No charge 
of moral dereliction was made against Him 
that had the slightest foundation in fact. The 
lives of men teeming with instances of moral 
lapse, with cowardly evasions of duty, craven 
compromises with truth, and ignoble be- 
trayals of trust, contrast forcibly with Christ's 
life with its unwavering adherence to duty, its 
unswerving allegiance to truth, its unflinching 
doing of right, and its fearless fulfillment of 
His Heavenly Father's will. His holiness is 
no doubtful reality, but a positive palpable 
fact. Gazing upon Him, upon the stainless 
whiteness of his soul, the incomparable purity 
of his character, the flawless course of His 
life, we are given a vision of the great God 
in His ineffable holiness. We see God in all 
His tremendous, burning intolerance of moral 
wrong, religious hypocrisy and spiritual in- 
difference. We see God in His stubborn de- 
termination to eradicate sin, to make an end of 
evil and to secure for truth and right supreme 



THE VISION OF GOD 39 

sovereignty. The white flame of Christ's 
moral indignation at man's sins of moral 
cowardice and spiritual callousness is but the 
fire of the wrath of God's holiness. Jesus 
Christ makes the Holiness of God, a great 
and glorious reality. 

In the second place, Christ reveals the ex- 
ceeding love of God. John's great affirma- 
tion, ^*God is love," is not the conclusion 
of a process of logic; it is the glowing tran- 
script of an overmastering experience which 
had come to him through Christ. God 
was supremely a God of love because Jesus 
Christ, his manifestation in the flesh, was pre- 
eminently a being of love. Love was the 
dominant characteristic of His every attitude 
and act. It breathed through the outgoings 
of his personality. It was radiantly, trium- 
phantly present in all his utterances and ac- 
tions. When we speak of love, we Instinctive- 
ly think of Jesus Christ. Raphael compels 
us to think of enchanting colors; Chopin of 
ravishing melodies; Emerson of ennoblinp- 
ideas; but Jesus Christ constrains us to think 
in terms of self-sacrificing love. His pity 
toward the erring, his tenderness to the 



40 VISION AND RESTRAINT 

stricken, his compassion upon the weak, are 
all the variant manifestations of an unvarying 
self-effacing love. His was a love capacious 
enough to compass the needs of the rich and 
the poor, the lettered and the unlettered, the 
strong and the weak. There was a com- 
prehensiveness and impartiality about it akin 
to the comprehensiveness and impartiality of 
nature's gracious bestowments. All this won- 
drous display of goodness on the part of 
Christ is but the expression of the inmost na- 
ture of God. 

In Christ's tireless seeking to win men from 
sin to holiness, from dissatisfaction and un- 
rest, to contentment and peace, we see reflect- 
ed the unutterable ardor of God for man's 
highest wellbeing. Christ reveals God in 
the glory of a love which reaches to the 
lowest depths of self-sacrifice, in order to draw 
men out of the toils of sin and establish them 
in lives of striving after Hiis own holiness. 
Concerning the attitude of God toward hu- 
manity, George Adam Smith says: "God is 
not abstract — that is withdrawn-holiness nor 
mere sovereign justice enthroned in heaven. 
He is one who arises and comes down for the 



THE VISION OF GOD 41 

salvation of men, who makes virtue his cause, 
and righteousness his passion. No seraph 
burns with ardor for justice, no angel of the 
presence flies more swiftly than Himself to 
the front of the failing battle." This divine 
passion for a humanity enjoying the fullest 
blessedness of being, expressed here and there 
in the utterances of the great Hebrew proph- 
ets, becomes incarnate in the life of Jesus 
Christ, so that men beholding his zeal for a 
holy humanity, and his sacrificial self-giving 
upon the cross to secure such a humanity, 
gaze upon the very heart of God. 

In considering the character and life of 
Christ as sources of a vision of God, we are 
considering what has never been sufficiently 
appreciated. In the hands of certain the- 
ologians, the incarnation has never been made 
to yield its full significance. Under the in- 
fluence of their representations, men have 
failed to realize that the incarnation is the 
great act of God, whereby He came down into 
the lowly, limited lot of humanity in the per- 
son of the Eternal Son, to reveal to us the 
glory of the divine likeness and to make it 
possible for us to attain unto it. The incarna- 



42 VISION AND RESTRAINT 

tion teaches us that God does not sit aloof 
in the light and glory of heaven, and from 
thence fling down upon us his words of ad- 
monition and instruction, but that He Him- 
self in Jesus Christ arises, and comes down, 
and becomes bone of our bone and flesh of 
our flesh, and in such an humble estate suffers 
and agonizes and finally lays down his life to 
accomplish our deliverance from sin's en- 
thrallment, and our enfranchisement in the 
kingdom of righteousness and peace. 

In conclusion, let me repeat, that this is 
the first and foremost vision which we have 
lost: the vision of God in the majesty of his 
holiness, and the power and passion of his 
love. God has suffered an eclipse which in 
the experience of many is wellnigh total. 
Men have allowed a thousand things to come 
between their vision and God. The world 
with its myriad interests and activities, its 
bewitching quests and enthralling enchant- 
ments, has eclipsed the glory of the divine. 
The human heart, teeming with desires for 
material enrichment and sensuous enjoyment, 
is enveloped in a murky atmosphere through 
which God is invisible. God does not lack 



THE VISION OF GOD 43 

for men to point the world to Himself, to 
show His ineffable qualities, his glorious holi- 
ness and his self-sacrificing love, but the world, 
intent on gain and pleasure, and immersed in 
the multifarious activities incident to the 
realization of its bent, does not and cannot 
see Him. Conditions everywhere obtain 
which are unfavorable to a clear, steadfast 
seeing of the face of the holy loving God. 



\ 



\ 



11 

THE VISION OF MAN 

N~^EXT in importance to the vision 
of God, is the vision of man. This, 
also, we have lost. We see plenty 
of creatures wearing the human 
face but man is not among them. We be- 
hold two-legged beings, but all that they 
signify is so many spadefuls of dirt, or so 
many shoves of the plane or so many entries 
in a ledger in a working day. The world is 
full of bipeds growing foodstuffs, mining ores, 
making machines and driving bargains, not 
to speak of the endless other things which 
they do. Their daring thrills us ; their energy 
astonishes us; their deeds amaze us; their 
lives are marvels of endurance and achieve- 
ment; but all that is appreciable about them is 
their skill and strength in the ditch, at the 
bench and behind the desk. They are invalu- 
able only as wealth-creating agencies. All 
other values arising from the fact that they 

44 



THE VISION OF MAN 45 

belong to the human family are disregarded. 
To those employing them to accomplish ends 
which contribute to their personal enrichment, 
they are not men, but hands. The man with 
his inalienable powers and prerogatives is lost 
in the employee. In a great manufacturing 
city, a wide-spread revival recently took place. 
The endorsements of it that made the pro- 
foundest impression upon many, came from 
the heads of the big manufacturing concerns. 
The substance of these endorsements was 
that the meetings were of great value be- 
cause of their good effect upon the work- 
ing efficiency of the men in their employ 
who attended them. What these men got 
from the meetings in the way of new moral 
impulse and energy, new spiritual interest 
and aspiration, new courage and hope for 
the battle of life, was apparently nothing 
to these employers. But what they got in the 
way of new energy and power of applica- 
tion for their work at the forge, the lathe, 
and the desk was everything. In our intense 
"desire and determination to be rich and pow- 
erful, men have come to mean to us only those 
values which avail to further our material 



46 VISION AND RESTRAINT 

ends. We have no vision of men as beings 
who are to be treated as ends in themselves. 
We see in them only instruments for the 
realization of such ends as we in our passion 
to be rich and powerful, may elect to enhance 
our own estate. We do not treat them as 
personalitieswith the inviolable rights of such. 
We do not see man as earth's preeminent in- 
habitant. We do not see man in his divine 
origin and divine destiny. We do not see him 
in his unique transcendency as a son of God, 
a participant in the divine nature, a candidate 
for the fulness of the divine likeness, an heir 
of the glories of the ages everlasting. To us 
of the Twentieth century, man is merely ''a 
little thing in trousers" to enable us to 
achieve our ambitions and accomplish our 
ends, not a godlike being of potential magni- 
tudes and majesties that presage a destiny 
too glorious for the imagination to conceive 
of, and the mind to express. 

We have lost our vision of man as a crea- 
tor of beauty. Utility being the standard of 
value of all creative achievement, that which 
ministers to the sense of the beautiful is 
lightly considered by the many. An artisan 



THE VISION OF MAN 47 

is valued more highly than an artist. An 
engineering feat is of more consequence than 
an artistic triumph. A new bridge bulks 
larger in the public eye than a new picture. 
The invention of a new labor-saving device 
calls forth greater wonder than the composi- 
tion of a new oratorio. The creative genius 
disclosed in great poetry enshrining man's 
divinest dreams and highest hopes; in great 
music, breathing unutterable yearnings ; and in 
great sculpture and painting embodying the 
loftiest ideality of which the finite spirit is 
capable, is unnoticed by the rank and file of 
present day humanity. Shakespeare's im- 
mortal tribute to man is only a string of words 
to the average modern reader: ''What a piece 
of work is man! How noble in reason! how 
infinite in faculty! in form and moving how 
express and admirable ! In action how like 
an angel ! In comprehension how like a God." 
We look with all but contempt upon those who 
are struggling to express in forms of beauty, 
the visions of their inspired imaginations, the 
aspirations of their heaven-enthralled souls. 
We see in them impossible persons eccentrical- 
ly constituted, examples of the abnormality of 



48 VISION AND RESTRAINT 

genius. They do not speak to us of the 
grandeur and greatness of man. 

We have lost our vision of man as a crea- 
tor of personal values. We do not see him in 
his endeavor to unfold the powers which dis- 
tinguish him from the lower orders. We do 
not see him achieving a rich, many-sided men- 
tality for its own sake. We see him dis- 
ciplining and developing his mental powers 
for purposes of material achievement, but we 
fail to see him eager to possess a well trained 
and well-stored mind for the pleasure which 
such a possession brings. We have also lost 
sight of man as a candidate for moral perfec- 
tion. The story of man's conflict with evil 
within and without, to secure perfection of 
character is eonian in its extent and eloquent 
in its appeal. Beginning his moral life at 
the zero point, whatever purity and goodness, 
kindness and compassion man has achieved, 
he has achieved through age-long effort. The 
vista of the past shows man unweariedly 
struggling to cast off the sway of evil and to 
yield his soul to the dominion of good. The 
moral history of man from the earliest his- 
toric records until now, is a moving story of 



THE VISION OF MAN 49 

unremitting endeavor amid failure and defeat 
to gain successive heights of moral reality, of 
unceasing conflict with low, degrading, cus- 
toms, enslaving traditions and brutal passions. 
The voices which sound through the battles 
and storms of the long ages behind the hu- 
manity of the Twentieth century, tell of the 
ceaseless struggle of man to achieve master- 
dom in the moral sphere. They are eloquent 
of his amazing persistence, his infinite pati- 
ence, his dauntless courage, and unconquer- 
able idealism. They blend in one sublime 
testimony to man's incomparable greatness. 
If we no longer see man in quest of the ele- 
ments which constitute morality, such as 
honesty, uprightness and benevolence, it goes 
without saying that we have failed to see him 
striving to achieve those qualities which con- 
stitute the essence of spirituality. The su- 
preme glory of man lies in the realization of 
an independent spiritual life, in his conscious 
participation in spiritual Reality. We do not 
see our fellow men girt about with such glory. 
We do not see them enjoying genuine rap- 
port with the Eternal Spirit, drinking in His 
power, wisdom and love and becoming, as a 



50 VISION AND RESTRAINT 

consequence, powerful, luminous, loving 
souls; centers of Eternal Life radiating out 
into the world Life's light and joy and peace. 
We do not see them as God sees them, eager, 
aspiring, achieving spirits wielding the ener- 
gies of the transcendent life in the workaday 
world, in the discharge of homely duties, in 
the solution of current problems and the con- 
quest of common difficulties. We do not see 
them reacting to Divine Reality, learning to 
live in it and for it; growing into more perfect 
harmony with the Spiritual Order, lending 
their expanding powers to the Spirit's pure 
activity, for the purpose of shaping the outer 
world of man according to the mind of God. 
How little we see of humanity in those exalted 
spiritual states to which it has succeeded in 
attaining! We see only the unrealized pur- 
poses, the unaccomplished ends, the unsealed 
heights. Were our eyes unsealed, we should 
see the most glorious realizations and satisfy- 
ing fruitions, achievements which attest the 
victorious play of humanity's highest energies. 
We have lost our vision of man as a co- 
worker with God in the task of transforming 
the world into a realm of righteousness and 



THE VISION OF MAN 5 1 

peace, a kingdom of divine holiness and love. 
We do not see him honored with the respon- 
sibility of cooperating with the great lover of 
concord to make His will supreme in the ter- 
restrial world. The Apostle Paul declares, 
^'We are God's fellow workers.'' How far 
from us is this conviction as we mingle with 
one another in the affairs of life. We see 
one another as independent seekers after some 
personal good, not as a community of workers 
laboring with God to effect His purposes of 
grace and truth. 

Man is a fellow worker with God in the 
task of making known His truth. Plato has 
defined man as ''the hunter of truth." His- 
tory shows him to be a tireless, fearless search- 
er after truth. No risks have been too great, 
no labors have been too arduous, no sacrifices 
have been too costly to deter men from the 
search for the truth. Andhaving discovered the 
truth, what daring and determination have 
they not shown in the effort to secure for it 
acceptance. Today, as in all the days that are 
past, the truth has its courageous adherents 
and advocates. Men are making sacrifices 



5 2 VISION AND RESTRAINT 

for it as truly as did those who were cast into 
prison or burned at the stake for their con- 
victions in the generations that are gone. How 
scant is the measure of recognition and ap- 
preciation that is meted out to them! 

Man is a co-worker with God in his cham- 
pionship of the right. Men have been no less 
bold and untiring in their efforts to establish 
the right than they have been in their effort 
to secure the prevalence of the truth. Justice, 
righteousness and mercy have had their un- 
wearied exponents, their ardent apostles. Men 
have laid down their lives in war and peace 
to win for their f ellowmen the rights and 
privileges which by the eternal equities are 
theirs. No battlefield has been too hazardous 
and horrible, no threat of kings has been too 
dire, to restrain them in their crusade for the 
right. In the present age, as in all past ages, 
there are men who cannot look calmly and 
dully on while their fellowmen are being 
trodden underfoot, but who must make a 
strong and uncompromising protest be the cost 
to themselves what it may. Every community 
has its crusaders against the drink traffic, the 
social evil, the gambling mania ; its unflinching 



THE VISION OF MAN 53 

protagonists of justice and mercy. How 
many never see them in their real character ! 
How many regard them as fanatics, as quixo- 
tic, unbalanced, irresponsible intermeddlers ! 
Their splendid sacrificial devotion, their fine 
invincible idealism count for nothing in the 
eyes of such. 

In addition to the champions of truth and 
right, there are those who are working with 
God to plant in the souls of their fellowmen 
the divine life; to secure for it in human lives 
a permanent sphere of activity; to draw 
men through their acceptance of Jesus Christ 
as their Saviour from the power of sin 
into the life of the Spirit, to constrain them 
to endeavor to be to ''the eternal goodness 
what his own hand is to a man." In min- 
isters of the gospel, evangelists, missionaries 
and Christian workers generally, we have 
fellowworkers with God toiling upon the 
great task of the world's evangelization and 
Christianization. God has his co-workers in 
the centers of light and learning, wealth and 
fashion and in the habitations of darkness and 
cruelty. All over the world there are faithful 
and unfaltering spirits linked in with God to 



54 VISION AND RESTRAINT 

make His reign of right and love a reality in 
the world, yet how blind is the average man 
of this age to their character, spirit and worth. 
Those in the thrall of the material do not see 
in these fellowworkers with God, the moral 
grandeur and spiritual sublimity, which loom 
upon the vision of all who see with the eyes 
of the spirit. So-called Christian me;i are dis- 
appointed when their promising sons show an 
inclination for the gospel ministry. They 
are positively shocked when their sons declare 
for the field of foreign missions. Instead 
of seeing in them a strain of the noblest char- 
acter, a Christlikeness of rare strength and 
beauty, they see only a strain of fanaticism, 
the marks of a foolish obsession. The aver- 
age man has a vociferous bravo for the young 
man who shows pluck and power in the busi- 
ness world. His best benediction rests upon 
his son aflame with passion for getting on, 
but he has nothing but disappointment and 
disapproval when his son flames out with a 
zeal for God that constrains him to become a 
messenger to men in their sin and woe. 

Alas, how blind are the men of the Twen- 
tieth century to the real greatness and glory 



THE VISION OF MAN 55 

of man. We do not see man with his fine 
audacities, his superb fidelities, and noble 
aspirations. We do not see him making the 
great renunciation and following the Christ. 
We do not see him putting under him the 
lusts of the flesh and taking into his soul 
the power that makes for supreme mastery 
over the world, the flesh, and the devil. We do 
not see him with his brows lifted to receive the 
benediction of heaven, and his feet turned to- 
ward the King's highway that leads out into 
the vast eternities. We see him only as a 
tool for the production of wealth to be care- 
lessly, consciencelessly thrown aside when 
broken. We see men only as pawns in life's 
shrewd game to be moved at the player's 
will. We see men only as cannon fodder in 
the battle of life, to be ruthlessly, recklessly 
sacrificed to avert defeat. We have stripped 
them of all the insignia of Godlikeness and 
considered them as instruments to achieve our 
selfish ends. Men are worth to us what we 
can get out of them in the way of work and 
wealth. They are not immortal souls reveal- 
ed in all their high potentialities in the great 
and good in all ages, and above all, in the 



56 VISION AND RESTRAINT 

incomparable Christ, in whom mankind at- 
tains its farthest reach of royalty and finds its 
fullest prophecy of achievement for time and 
eternity. 



Ill 

THE VISION OF A MORAL ORDER 

WE have lost our vision of a world- 
order so constituted as to compass 
the ideals of moral righteous- 
ness. We have ceased to realize 
that we live in a morally governed universe. 
The conviction that this is a world in which, in 
the long run, righteousness wins and unrighte- 
ousness loses, no longer grips us. We live as 
though it were largely a matter of chance as 
to how the processes of history eventuated. 
We are conscious of possessing no principle 
whereby the issue of the activities of men can 
be determined in advance. We do not do our 
thinking and acting in recognition of the 
moral genius of the world. 

Multitudes give the matter of the kind of 
world in which they live absolutely no 
thought. Such expressions as *'the moral 
order of the world,'' "the moral character of 
the universe" mean next to nothing to them. 

57 



58 VISION AND RESTRAINT 

They stand for mere abstractions, whose 
significance is of no concern to them. The 
character of the universe is of no interest to 
them in the least. Their only concern is to 
get through the world as best as they can. 
They have no time or desire to speculate as to 
the make-up of it. 

Many others who have given the matter 
more or less consideration, if asked to express 
themselves, would say that the moral element 
in the constitution of the world is practically 
nil. The world order honors nothing but 
physical and mental efficiency. It gives suc- 
cess to superior force and superior intelli- 
gence. It prospers the causes which muster 
into their service superior battalions and 
battleships, which command superior strategy 
and technique. The world is one in which 
the battle is to the strong, and the race is to 
the swift. Considerations of an ethical char- 
acter have little or no weight with it. It 
drives forward recking little or nothing of the 
purposes and projects of righteousness, deal- 
ing out victory to the side that fights the hard- 
est or plays the cleverest. 
There are still others who would like to 



VISION OF A MORAL ORDER 59 

believe in a moral order, but the facts of the 
world make such a belief for them out of the 
question. They see evil everywhere triumph- 
ing over the good. They see injustice usurp- 
ing the throne of justice. They see oppression 
in full swing. They see duplicity and 
dishonesty honored and rewarded. They see 
the godly set aside to make room for the 
ungodly. They behold the loftiest ideals and 
divinest ends of men thrown to the ground 
and trailed in the dust. In the face of an 
exhibit like this what mockery to speak of a 
moral universe. With robbery and oppres- 
sion rampant, with wickedness flagrantly rife 
in high places and in low, there is little 
ground for believing in a righteous order of 
things. Those who are of this mind are 
pointing at the present time to the great Euro- 
pean war as evidence of the unmoral charac- 
ter of the world. This huge terrific outburst 
of human madness crowningly illustrates how 
utterly lacking in moral elements the world 
order is. It is a lurid revelation of the 
absence in the universe of moral purpose and 
determination. To talk of a moral universe 
in the face of the unspeakable, unimaginable 



6o VISION AND RESTRAINT 

ravages wrought by this war, the Inconceiv- 
able suffering it has brought upon millions of 
innocent people, the appalling sacrifice of 
human life and frightful destruction of prop- 
erty, the unleashing of savage, brutal pas- 
sions and the wreckage of character, is to talk 
the language of the insane and the idiotic. 
Whatever the preachers and the philosophers 
may say, the facts are all against the represen- 
tation of the world as constituted to secure the 
ends of moral righteousness. 

Now those who are indifferent to the ques- 
tion as to the moral constitution of the uni- 
verse, are, as a general thing, indifferent to the 
moral welfare of humanity. They are little 
concerned as to whether society progresses or 
retrogrades, provided they are allowed to 
drift along as their hearts desire. The second 
class of men who hold that the order of the 
world is unmoral, hold to this belief, because 
they meet as a consequence with no inner 
check in the prosecution of their plans for the 
exploitation or oppression of their fellowmen. 
It best suits their purpose to believe thus, 
because they have a freer hand in the execu- 
tion of their nefarious designs. They be- 



VISION OF A MORAL ORDER 6i 

lieve what it is to their interests to believe. 
Bent upon achieving their ends, be the sacri- 
fice of justice and righteousness what it may, 
they conceive of the world order as destitute 
of moral intention and activity. 

In the case of the third class, the difficulty 
is one of failure to take in all the facts. They 
have focussed their vision on certain obvious 
untoward conditions and from them have 
drawn the most sweeping conclusions. A local 
casualty leads them to disbelieve in the good- 
ness of the whole universe. Their vision 
wants breadth, inclusiveness, the sweep rep- 
resented by the lapse of centuries and millen- 
niums. It does not run back as far as the 
records of history go, and from them, as a 
starting point, come down the centuries, not 
stopping until it has reached the present day. 
Such a comprehensive survey of the life of 
mankind as this, would bring to light a steady 
trend of things onward and upward. No un- 
biased man can contend that the historic pro- 
cess in its totality fails to reveal moral prog- 
ress, a steady movement of humanity away 
from savagery toward civilization, away from 
cruelty toward kindness and compassion, 



62 VISION AND RESTRAINT 

away from oppression and tyranny toward 
mercy and justice. The long lapse of time 
shows positive advance in every phase of 
human existence, in higher and nobler ideas 
of God, in clearer visions of the dignity and 
worth of man, in deeper convictions of the 
eternal antithesis of right and wrong, in hu- 
maner laws, kindlier customs and more bene- 
ficent institutions. Within the memory of the 
living, iniquitous laws and institutions have 
been swept away, the whole plane of thought 
and life has experienced an elevation, if not 
appreciable to any great degree, none the 
less real and vital. There are still widespread, 
deep seated, outrageous evils. There are still 
existent great abuses, grave wrongs. There 
is the great war with all its awful revela- 
tions of the fires of hatred and jealousy 
smouldering in the human heart, awaiting a 
favorable opportunity to blaze out in consum- 
ing flames. The tiger and the ape still shov/ 
their savage and bestial natures in the life 
of mankind. But what are the evils of the 
Twentieth century compared with those of the 
first? Granted the great war of Europe is 
a frightful witness to the savagery of so- 



VISION OF A MORAL ORDER 63 

called civilized man, a fearful disclosure of 
the possibilities of cruelty still existing in the 
human breast, the tremendous outburst of 
world-wide grief and indignation it has evok- 
ed, is a counter disclosure of the lofty height 
which the conscience of the race has reached. 
In addition to this there are the great pains 
which each of the belligerent parties is tak- 
ing, to justify itself in the course it is pursu- 
ing. Of what is this indicative but a desire 
to, at least, appear right in the eyes of the 
world. The terrible happenings of the pres- 
ent should not be a barrier to the belief that 
the order of the world is through and through 
ethical, that human history in the sweep of 
millenniums is a continuous process whereby 
the race is lifted to higher and higher levels. 
The course of humanity in its historic totality, 
reveals an order of reality which is in absolute 
opposition to evil and iniquity and unequivo- 
cally on the side of right and good. As we look 
into the processes of history, we see that the 
world is so organized that the good tends 
to constant increase, and the evil to constant 
decrease. Give evil time, and it will slay its 
own agents, whereas, in the same length of 



64 VISION AND RESTRAINT 

time, good will multiply its doers. '*Evil shall 
slay the wicked and they that hate the righte- 
ous shall be desolate/' says the Psalmist and 
again : **I have seen the wicked in great power 
and spreading himself like a green bay-tree; 
yet he passed away and lo he was not: Yea I 
sought him and he could not be found." The 
prophet confirms the observation of the 
Psalmist: *^Say ye to the righteous that it 
shall be well with him for they shall eat the 
fruit of their doings. Woe unto the evil it 
shall be ill with him." Says Dr, Newton 
Clarke, in his illuminating book ^*The Chris- 
tian Doctrine of God," 'Xife has a vindica- 
tive and retributory power imparted to it by 
the Creator. It is so ordained that the good 
and right work to the doer's advantage, and 
wrong and evil to his disadvantage." Compre- 
hending in our survey the whole sweep of his- 
toric time, we see decay, diminution and death 
overtaking the powers of evil, and waxing 
strength and sovereignty coming to the pow- 
ers of good. We see every sign of a world 
constituted in righteousness and justice. 

Now, considering the character of modern 
thought and life, it is not surprising that men 



VISION OF A MORAL ORDER 65 

should lose their vision of such a world order. 
It is an age when men believe mightily in the 
power of human force and intelligence, when 
force and intelligence other than human are 
treated as negligible. This is not strange 
when we look about us and see how many 
things human force and intelligence are bring- 
ing to pass; when we see how successful in 
the execution of their plans are the strong 
and the shrewd. It is no wonder that the 
careless, inconsidering onlooker, quickly con- 
cludes that, given the requisite strength and 
shrewdness, anything can be carried to success. 
Again there is the tendency to believe the 
testimony of the passing hours, against the 
testimony of the rolling centuries. A great 
war appalling in its destructiveness, and 
unspeakable in its cruelties once and for 
all settles the question of a moral order. 
Whatever vision of a moral universe men 
once had, is quenched for good and all 
in the blaze of such a conflagration as is 
raging in Europe today. A wave of crime 
sweeping over the land for a few months, 
a lapse on the part of some financial mag- 
nate of national fame, the defeat of a meas- 



66 VISION AND RESTRAINT 

ure in the interest of social justice, these 
and many other like events of the day, are 
made the basis of many an assault on the 
moral order of the world. In our touch-and-go 
manner of living, we do not take sufficient time 
to run through the course of history to see 
how steadily the race has advanced, how other 
ages as well as our own have had their stagger- 
ing setbacks, their grievous lapses, and how, 
in spite of all these, there has been a steady 
forward movement toward benigner modes of 
thought and life. 

Finally, we may account for our loss of the 
vision of the moral order, through our in- 
ability to appreciate the finer, subtler processes 
of the universe. We believe only in those 
realities whose activities are accompanied by 
the crash of thunder and the flash of light- 
ning. We believe in big guns and mighty 
engines, in those deafening, blinding processes 
of industry and war whereby the markets of 
the world are flooded with material goods 
and the map of the world is changed. We 
do not believe in those great voiceless pro- 
cesses of moral and spiritual activity whereby 
the world is uplifted to new heigths of char- 



VISION OF A MORAL ORDER 67 

acter. The workings of the right are so still 
that we have no sense of their reality. The 
fact of a moral order constituted of eternal 
truth and love, the expression of the char- 
acter of the eternal, unchangeable, right- 
eous, God, does not impinge heavily upon the 
souls of men whose ears are filled with the 
din of the market place and the roar of the 
battlefield. Yet, notwithstanding this, there is 
such an order, and in it we have the sure 
guarantee of the ultimate overthrow of wrong 
and evil, and enthronement of right and good. 
The loss of this vision of the moral order 
of the world, together with the loss of the 
vision of God and of man, which we have 
already considered, is responsible for the ab- 
sence of restraint so noticeable at the present 
time. This will be the theme of our discus- 
sion in the following chapter. 



PART TWO 



THE CASTING OFF OF RESTRAINT 

IT is a widely observed and accepted fact 
that present day humanity does not take 
kindly to restraint. Essayists who set 
themselves to note and report our doings, 
declare that we strenuously object to having 
our activities and operations hindered and 
held up in any wise. We insist upon a clear 
track from start to finish. The least ob- 
stacle in our path annoys and angers us. No- 
body wants to feel restrained. Every body 
wants the sense of unqualified freedom. This 
explains the reluctance with which we take 
vows and assume responsibilities. It explains 
our chariness of relationships which tend, 
to a greater or less degree, to circumscribe 
our lives. It explains our antagonism to 
everything which interferes with our so- 
called personal liberty. We join with in- 
decent eagerness an organization which en- 
tails no serious obligations upon us. We 
draw back in horror from the organization 

71 



72 VISION AND RESTRAINT 

which involves us In added accountability. 
We take to only those ties which spell the 
possibility of increased profits and pleasures. 
We are scornful of the least savour of dis- 
cipline. ^^Discipline," says L. P. Jacks, the 
author of the Alchemy of Thought, ''Is an 
unpopular word and must we not add an un- 
popular thing." In these emancipating and 
emancipated days, nobody grown or ungrown 
consents to be disciplined. ''Laissez faire" de- 
scribes the desire and determination of every- 
one. We are strictly silent as to our duties, 
and tediously talkative as to our rights. We 
pass laws in multitudes, but they are intended 
for somebody else. We are a law unto our- 
selves. Authority is a capital thing for those 
who need it; as for ourselves, we have out- 
grown it. 

This let-US-alone attitude is common to all 
classes of modern humanity. It emerges into 
vociferous visibility in the revolts of the small 
boy and girl. Children rebel against the pow- 
ers-that-be before they lose their first set of 
teeth, and for years thereafter, they continue 
the role with undiminished energy. Parents 
stcind af^hast nt their children's insurgent per 



CASTING OFF OF RESTRAINT 73 

formances and confess their inability to put 
an effective quietus on them. Conditions are 
better in the school than in the home, but 
there is abundant room for improvement. At 
college, every scrap of liberty allowed the 
student body is greedily seized and lustily 
made the most of. Young collegians consider 
themselves entitled to a ruffianism not permit- 
ted other members of society. The idea pos- 
sesses many of them that the educational end 
of an institution of learning is purely an- 
cillary to the escapade end of it, that lavish 
endowments and luxurious equipments have 
their raison' detre in supplying the commun- 
ity with callow rowdies privileged to disturb 
its peace and violate its order. But the col- 
lege student need not flatter himself that he 
is theonlyunrestrainedmemberof society. Says 
Maurice Low in his American People : "Amer- 
ican lawlessness begins in the nursery and the 
schoolroom and ends in the courts and legisla- 
tures." But why single out the courts and 
legislatures when the phenomenon is existent 
in all the walks of life ? All through our mod- 
ern life there runs the tendency to regard 
the imposition of restraint as unnecessary and 



74 VISION AND RESTRAINT 

unwarrantable and worthy of resentment and 
revolt. 

The casting off of restraint comes out no 
where more clearly than in the business world. 
Most men enter the field to make as much 
money as they can. It seldom occurs to 
the majority that after a certain amount 
has been made, it is in order for them to 
withdraw and give others a chance. Those 
who actually do withdraw, and thereby give 
others a chance, are so few that they serve 
as objects of curiosity to their fellowmen and 
after they have been inspected, are dismissed 
as human freaks or as subjects for the at- 
tentions of alienists. It requires no special 
knowledge of the psychology of animals to 
perceive that even those of the porcine per- 
suasion stop when they get enough. Man 
unlike his animal forebears does not. He con- 
tinues to remain at the trough, if for no other 
reason, than to keep some other candidate for 
its contents away. In the matter of money 
making, he puts no check upon himself. To 
his last breath he pursues the dollar at the 
top of his speed ; he leaves no stone unturned 
to bring his accumulations up to the highest 



CASTING OFF OF RESTRAINT 75 

possible notch. He invokes the assistance of 
every agency available. He has special laws 
passed to accelerate his operations. Attorneys 
are hired to make them look as innocent as 
the by-laws of a Girl's Friendly Society. They 
are benevolent looking documents. They read 
as if contemplating making every man a pres- 
ent of the millennium. When their true char- 
acter is unmasked, these same attorneys raise 
heaven and earth to defeat the movement for 
their repeal. In his rage for riches, many a 
business man charges the consumer extortion- 
ate prices for the goods he manufactures or 
handles. Such a thing as intrinsic value has 
almost disappeared from the marts of trade. 
Not what a thing is worth, but what it will 
bring, is the modern price basis. Men are 
known to stop at nothing to keep prices up. 
Commission merchants in a glutted market, 
will deliberatelydestroyconsignments of food- 
stuffs rather than sell them at a lower figure. 
The high cost of living may be due in part to 
the cost of high living, but it is also due to 
those who fix the prices of commodities re- 
gardless of their inherent worth. In his mania 
for money, many a man will compel his em- 



76 VISION AND RESTRAINT 

ployees to accept wages below what they are 
entitled to. The wages paid are not determined 
bywhat themenneed to properly care for them- 
selves and their families, but by what can be 
spared from the profits after the usual divi- 
dends have been taken out. The customary 
dividend must be paid regardless of the state 
of the times. The upshot of it is, that it is 
often paid out of the pockets of the employees. 
Thanks to the overcharged consumer and the 
underpaid employee, the coffers of the em- 
ploying classes in industry soon reach a state 
of overflowing fulness. Is it any wonder that 
American society has come to resemble a 
pyramid with its over five thousand million- 
aires at the top and its ten million wretched 
poor at the bottom ? Is it any wonder that one 
per cent, of the population owns more than 
one-half of the wealth of the land, that we 
have twenty families enjoying an income of 
from five to twenty millions per year, and over 
one million families whose incomes do not rise 
above six hundred dollars. The fabulous for- 
tune is a tremendous witness to the unchecked 
passion for gold so prevalent at the present 
time. Those who are its incarnation, come 



CASTING OFF OF RESTRAINT 77 

dose to answering G. Lowes Dickinson's un- 
complimentary description of the American 
as '*a predatory unreflecting, naive, pre- 
cociously accomplished brute.'' When we 
look around us and see men exercising no self- 
restraint in the business world, but driving 
ahead with demonic fury, adding million to 
million, and reaching out for more, it is easy 
to see why there is so much ignorance and 
degradation, so much poverty and want in an 
age whose equal for wealth producing inven- 
tions and discoveries the world has never seen. 
All this is not saying that business men as a 
class are unprincipled and dishonest. Far, 
very far from it. It is safe to say that the 
vast majority of business men aim to be hon- 
est and upright in their dealings. But it is 
safe to say that only a small percentage of 
them regard it a duty to retire from the field 
after they have made all that they can possibly 
use during their lifetime, and to hand over to 
others the opportunities for money making 
which they have enjoyed. 

The want of self-restraint is seen, in the 
second place, in the realm of reform. Many 



78 VISION AND RESTRAINT 

of our so-called reformers are utter strangers 
to self-restraint. Acting on the principle that 
the end justifies the means, they resort to 
tactics outlawed by the moral sense of the 
community. We have labor leaders destroy- 
ing bridges and buildings to secure justice for 
the laboring man. We have factory opera- 
tives spoiling the product of the factories in 
the process of its manufacture, to win for labor 
its rights. We have women disturbing the 
peace of religious meetings, insulting public 
dignitaries, defacing works of art, breaking 
windows and otherwise injuring property, all 
to secure for their sex, the ballot. We are 
told by them, that this is the only way to 
get what they want. Means less drastic 
would fail of the desired end. This is the 
logic of the devil, the reasoning of either the 
insane or the degenerate. Doing evil that 
good may come is a procedure that is vicious. 
No doubt many reforms cannot be won with- 
out recourse to unusual measures, but to resort 
to wrongs to secure rights, is an act of the 
deepest moral obliquity. Rights won by 
means of wrongs, in the long run, prove a 
curse rather than a blessing. A precedent is 



CASTING OFF OF RESTRAINT 79 

established, of which men will not be slow to 
take advantage, in their desire to accomplish 
ends by no means as beneficial to society as the 
ends sought by those who have given them 
their cue. Hurrying the millennium has become 
such a habit with many well meaning people 
that they are tempted to stop at nothing to 
hustle it their way. They seem to think that 
the Almighty has issued a special permit to 
them to disregard the proprieties, conventions 
and laws of society; in fact that He has given 
them carte blanche to operate as the case 
calls for. Men turned dynamiters and women 
turned desperadoes to secure the demands of 
justice, luridly illustrate the lack of restraint 
in the realm of reform. 

Coming to the realm of men's relations 
with one another, we observe the same ab- 
sence of restraint. In their behavior toward 
one another they dislike to be bound by con- 
siderations other than those of self interest 
and self indulgence. Self is the sovereign 
factor in all processes of social conduct. Many 
reserve the right to break an engagement or 
a promise, as their personal interests seem to 
require. They are ready to violate the most 



8o VISION AND RESTRAINT 

sacred vows when a chance whim seizes them. 
Nothing Is sacred under the stress of insistent 
desire. In the marriage relation there is a 
notable lack of self-restraint. There is no 
inconsiderable chafing under the checks which 
marriage places upon men and women. There 
is widespread disposition to want to enjoy to 
the full its privileges, and reject in toto its ob- 
ligations. In the eyes of an increasing number, 
the sanctity of the marriage relation is an 
exploded supersition. There is no law higher 
than the law of self-love. Why should a man 
be restrained from doing a thing which 
brings him pleasure. If an act is pleasur- 
able, that is sufficient; no questions should 
be asked. Its rightness or wrongness is a 
proposition of supreme impertinence. With 
personal pleasure the supreme faction, it is 
not strange that so many marriages come 
to grief. Says Dr. Francis A. Peabody, in 
his latest book, '*The Christian Life in the 
Modern World:" '^Between 1870 and 1905, 
the population of the country doubled, while 
the divorce movement increased sixfold. In 
1870 the proportion of divorces for each 



CASTING OFF OF RESTRAINT 8 1 

hundred thousand of the population was 28. 
In 1900 it was 73. In 1870 there were 33 
marriages to one divorce. In 1 880 there were 
23 and, according to the National Bureau of 
Statistics and Labor at the present time, 1909, 
the chances are that not less than one mar- 
riage in sixteen will be ultimately dissolved by 
divorce and it seems reasonable to suppose 
that the ratio is nearer one to twelve." 
(Special Report on Marriage and Divorce, 
1909, Part I, p. 22.) In not a few instances 
the ceremony of marriage is dispensed with 
altogether as a stupid and musty formality. 
As a consequence, people form temporary 
unions which are dissolvable at the pleasure 
of either party. Personal convenience and 
comfort determine the duration of the relation 
and the conscience has nothing to say about it. 
But the marriage vow is not the only vow 
that is broken. Witness the broken vows 
which the multitudes of lapsed membership in 
the various social, fraternal and religious or- 
ganizations represent. Many men are no 
sooner in an organization than they are prac- 
tically out of it again. It does not seem to be 
in them to meet its obligations. They want 



82 VISION AND RESTRAINT 

all the benefits of membership with none of its 
liabilities. Our communities are full to over- 
flowing with erstwhile members of fraternal 
orders. Paying dues loses its glamour and 
the ex-status is soon assumed. Our communi- 
ties also overflow with lapsed church mem- 
bers. Church membership appealed to them 
in terms of what they could receive, not in 
terms of what they could give. Remind them 
of their derelictions, resort to the slightest 
shadow of a suspicion of church discipline, 
and they will flare up and fly out. 

Again the lack of self-discipline is seen in 
the want of regard which many have for the 
effect of their personal influence. They insist 
upon indulging their appetites and desires re- 
gardless of others. No consideration is shown 
those who are weak and easily led astray. 
The Apostle Paul says in speaking offered to 
idols: '*If meat make my brother to offend, I 
will eat no meat while the world standeth." 
How few take this high ground. We choose 
our pleasures with no regard to the weaker 
brother or sister. If we are pleased, it is 
enough. We order all our movements with 
a view to our own personal satisfaction. Many 



CASTING OFF OF RESTRAINT 83 

of us spend the Lord's day with no reference 
to our neighbors or the rising generation. 
Many parents are unconsciously rearing their 
families in utter disregard of the sanctity of 
the Lord's day either by remaining home from 
divine worship and pottering about the house, 
or by taking the entire household off in a trol- 
ley car or automobile for a day of pleasure. 
Regard for the effect of their example has 
ceased to be a potent factor in the conduct of 
many. 

Finally the absence of restraint is seen in 
the realm of personal habits. To put a curb 
upon ourselves in respect of many things vital 
to our welfare seems unthinkable to us. How 
many, to speak of a very intimate matter, over- 
eat. The majority of the disorders of the 
well-to-do come from the habit of excessive 
eating. What shall we say of drinking? How 
many are tea and coffee topers! The use of 
intoxicants, it goes without saying, is appalling- 
ly common and heavy. We are closing the 
saloons but the amount of liquor consumed 
does not seem to diminish very greatly. What 
shall we say of the use of tobacco? Is it not 
also appallingly enormous? And there are 



84 VISION AND RESTRAINT 

our expenditures for luxuries. Dr. Peabody, 
after speaking of the prodigious expenditures 
of the rich for luxuries, says: "Hardly less 
misdirected and wastful, however, though less 
conspicuous, is the extravagance of the wage- 
earners and their families. Ill chosen and ex- 
pensive food; hand to mouth buying; migra- 
tory living; the passion for finery and the still 
more imperative craving for alcoholic drink 
not only dissipates earnings but reduces the 
capacity to earn.'' Well does he say the peo- 
ple of the United States ^'whether prosperous 
or poor, are the most thriftless and extrava- 
gant in the world." Our lack of restraint is 
also seen in the styles of dress for women. 
The ultra effects in women's fashions are a 
slap in the face of common decency. The 
styles worn by the women of the days of 
Pompeii's palmiest, look puritanic compared 
with modern modes. As between modesty 
and modishness the latter has the right of 
way. Other items deserving to be mentioned 
as illustrations of our inability to preserve 
a golden mean are our work and play. 
We both work and play with little or no 



CASTING OFF OF RESTRAINT 85 

regard for our health. We work with the 
rush of madness. We burn up our vital force 
in toil with reckless disregard of the conse- 
quences, and we play with the same rage. Be- 
tween them both we are on the go continually. 
The snatches of sleep we get in the small 
hours of the morning we grumblingly be- 
grudge. We finally land in a sanitarium, but 
we are no sooner cured and discharged before 
we are hitting the old pace. To moderate 
our movements, to work and play temper- 
ately, to eat and drink continently, seems be- 
yond our ability, to such an extent has the 
devil of excess gotten into us. 

It is plain from the foregoing that there 
is a wide ranging revolt against the norms 
which have guided and governed men in their 
moral conduct in the past. There is a widely 
prevalent disposition to treat such norms as 
antiquated and exploded. We are being 
told over and over again that the soul must 
be free that it must not be gyved with 
forms and conventions and creeds. It must 
be, and must remain, unshackled to rea- 
lize its own sovereign elections. What if 
these elections are contrary to the decrees 



86 VISION AND RESTRAINT 

of constituted authorities, all the worse for 
such decrees. It is by said elections that the 
world's advance is made. We are told on 
good authority that men prominent in the 
academic world in certain parts of Europe are 
agitating the reintroduction of polygamy, and 
that highly educated and refined women all 
over Europe are advocating the right of 
motherhood of unmarried women. These are 
only samples of the revolt that is on. Says 
Mr. Begbie in his Crisis of Morals: ''Till 
now, mankind has held that virtue is higher 
than vice, that love and sacrifice are holier 
emotions than self-assertions and self-indulg- 
ence, that purity and modesty are graces of 
the soul which are more seemly and which 
more uplift humanity than all the swinish 
propulsions of our animal natures. But now 
it has become bombast and clap-trap to speak 
of duty; for a young girl flung into the swirl 
of society, modesty and reticence are weights 
that sink her out of sight. To be impudent, 
to be immodest, to be daring, to be utterly and 
completely self-minded, this is to float on the 
surface and attract the iridescent scum. To 
think only of oneself, to have a good time, to 



CASTING OFF OF RESTRAINT 87 

be free of responsibility, to stand clear of 
duty, to avoid seriousness, to laugh, to dance, 
to push, to jostle and to chatter the gospel of 
solipsism in a maze of sensual distractions, 
this is to be modern, this is to be abreast of 
the times." These new permissions which 
learned men and refined women in Europe are 
issuing, constitute what is called the new mor- 
ality, which is only another name for the old 
immorality. It is not strange that the new 
morality, which so kindly relieves its benefici- 
aries of many an inconvenient restraint, should 
have its own religion. There is therefore a 
new religion with sanctions suited to the re- 
quirements of the new morality. This new 
religion has one great concern, namely, to 
make its adherents happy. It sets about this by 
telling them that sin is a figment of the fancy 
and suffering, an error of "moral mind." God 
and man are not Father and son but brothers 
and comrades. God is only a big brother 
watching over man with a big brother's devo- 
tion. Man is a small brother who should not 
cry over his sins and shortcomings, but should 
forget them and strive to be happy. He is to 
aim at well-to-do-ness and is entrtled to any 



88 VISION AND RESTRAINT 

agency, of assistance to him in arriving at such 
an estate. A religion with these ambitions for 
its votaries, it is needless to say, does not lack 
for converts. To pass from a sanctuary which 
treats sin as a reality, to one, that treats it 
as an unreality, is proving a move of con- 
siderable popularity. A religion which re- 
solves the Deity into a big brother, who is 
good naturedly considerate of his small broth- 
er's mishaps, is ideal underpinning for the 
new morality. It is the crowning provision 
for a regime which prides itself upon its ''free 
souls." Millionaires extorting millions upon 
millions from the public, reformers overriding 
every consideration of reason and justice to 
carry the day for some reform, rebels against 
the existing order of things, flouters of the 
cannon against chastity, seekers of the salaci- 
ously suggestive in dress and drama, writers 
and readers of corpulent books celebrating 
sexual emancipations, the whole rank and file 
of the ''freed," should rise up and build tem- 
ples to the new religion for they are indebted 
to its generous sanctions for the new morality 
which they enjoy. 

This completes our survey of the condi- 



CASTING OFF OF RESTRAINT 89 

tions consequent upon the casting off of re- 
straint by the present generation. As it is our 
contention in these pages that this casting off 
of restraint is due to the loss of vision, and 
more specifically to the loss of the visions of 
God, man and the moral order we shall con- 
sider in the following chapter the ways where- 
by these visions may be recovered and the 
restraint which we have lost may be won back. 



PART THREE 



RECOVERING THE VISION 

THE imperative need of the age is 
the recovery of the lost vision. 
Eyes that have been closed to 
realms of spiritual reality must be 
opened to behold their priceless treasures. 
Powers of spiritual perception and apprecia- 
tion which have fallen into disuse must renew 
their activity and recover for their possessors 
relationships which they have suffered to slip 
from them. The visualizing faculty of the 
soul must begin again to function and make 
apparent those eternal values which men, in 
their absorption in material things, have lost 
sight of. 

The recovery of spiritual vision does not 
necessarily mean a reactionary swing away 
from those material and mundane interests 
which have a legitimate claim upon mankind. 
Men can see clearly things spiritual and, at 
the same time, hold steadily in sight the things 
which are material. The two categories are 

93 



94 VISION AND RESTRAINT 

not inherently antagonistic to each other. 
Men can make substantial conquests in the 
material world and at the same time acquire 
appreciable areas of spiritual reality. In 
other words they can be both this worldly 
and other worldly. A full-orbed man will be 
both, but, while being both, he will be careful 
to maintain the true proportion between them. 
He will not allow the material world to over- 
shadow the spiritual. He will not permit 
temporal values to crowd out of his mind 
values that are spiritual. The mistake of 
multitudes of modern men has been, to sub- 
ordinate the spiritual to the material, or worse 
than this, to obliterate the spiritual from their 
consciousness altogether. Life has come to 
mean to them opportunity for self-aggrand- 
izement in terms of material accumulations. 
The world is to them a great shop, a colossal 
emporium, a place of industrial and commer- 
cial activity, whose end is the declaration of 
larger and larger dividends. In their intense 
absorption in life's material side, the spiritual 
side has lost the position of superiority which 
by inherent right belongs to it. Men have 



RECOVERING THE VISION 95 

come to live in many cases as if the spiritual 
life were not only inferior and subservient, 
but also non-existent. Their lives are those 
of **Finished and finite clods, untroubled by 
a spark." 

Now this loss of spiritual vision, as we have 
already seen, has resulted in a corresponding 
loss of restraint. In the absence of rapport 
with realities trandscending the temporal and 
sensuous, men have allowed their appetites 
and impulses the freest rein. With no vision 
of Almighty God before their eyes, seeking 
through the outgoings of His holiness and 
love to secure for Himself a race of beings 
participating in His nature and enjoying His 
fellowship, with no vision of man before them 
as the child of God, the climax of an eonian 
process of development, and with no vision of 
a moral order insuring to all things a final 
issue in accordance with the principles of 
righteousness and justice, self-discipline and 
self-control have gone by the board. There 
has been a veritable riot of reckless, lawless 
outreaching for material things on the part of 
men. With these visions no longer restrain- 
ing them, their lives have been resolved into 



96 VISION AND RESTRAINT 

orgies of pitiless, activity to enhance their 
temporal status. If this is to cease, and 
moderation and reason to prevail, if men are 
to be satisfied with the golden mean in all their 
pursuits and pleasures, then, these restraining 
visions must appear once more in their sover- 
eign power. In the present chapter, we shall 
deal with the means whereby these visions 
may be recovered. 

The first step to be taken to recover the 
lost vision, is a return to the throne of divine 
grace or, in a word, to prayer. The past dec- 
ades have witnessed a general abandonment of 
prayer. The practice of the presence of God, 
is an experience unknown to multitudes. It is 
safe to say that large numbers of even so- 
called Christians know nothing of prayer as a 
daily experience. Their praying is fitful, in- 
frequent, the resort of occasions of acute need. 
The reasons for this treatment of prayer are 
not far to seek. They lie in the whole trend 
of modern thought and life, in a mode of 
thinking and living which is unfriendly to the 
conditions which encourage men to pray. To 
many it seems foolish and presumptuous on 
the part of man to attempt to get the ear of 



RECOVERING THE VISION 97 

the Being modern science has disclosed. 
How can the Being who created such an 
illimitable universe as ours, and who presides 
over its multitudinous affairs interest Himself 
in the affairs of single individuals like our- 
selves. The doctrine of special individual 
providence seems inconceivable to many, and 
has therefore been set aside as wholly unten- 
able. The controversy over Divine Provi- 
dence and human prayer has been a long and 
engrossing one. Those who feel a reluctance 
about seeking to interest the Almighty Crea- 
tor in their personal affairs, may forget how- 
ever that the ability to create all this infinity 
of suns and stars, is proof of the creator's 
ability to give the minutest attention to the 
last detail of the stupendous whole, which 
means his ability to attend to the needs of the 
least of his living creatures. W^hy, therefore, 
should it be thought a thing incredible that 
God should answer the prayers of men for 
the gifts of His love ? Well does Ruskin say : 
'*There is nothing so small that we may not 
honor God by asking His guidance in it or 
insult Him by taking it into our own hands." 



98 VISION AND RESTRAINT 

Those who are deterred from prayer by con- 
siderations of the magnitude of the task 
which the control of the universe entails upon 
God, belittle His ability. They think of Him 
as a being after their own finite order. 

Again, in the temper and spirit of the 
modern man there is a decided obstacle to 
prayer. The man of today is exceedingly self- 
sufficient and self-dependent. It goes against 
the grain of the strong, self-reliant man to 
pray. If there is anything he ought to have, 
he will take off his coat and work for it. 
With energy and application, such as his, 
nothing is too difficult for men to achieve ; for 
them to go to God for things which, with a 
little enterprise and aggressiveness they can get 
themselves, is to forfeit their self-respect. 
They will be pensioners on no being's bounty, 
paupers of no person, but will pay their way 
or work their passage. There is nothing so 
commendable as self-reliance and industry, but 
it must not be forgotten that there are things 
human energy and ingenuity are unable to 
achieve. Many of God's greatest gifts are 
what the word signifies, namely, gifts, free- 
will bestowments made, not on the basis of 



RECOVERING THE VISION 99 

quid pro quo, but on the basis of free grace. 

Another factor militating against prayer, 
is the tendency to over-stress the practical as- 
pect of the religious life. In the intensely 
practical atmosphere of the modern church, 
the reflective, devotional side of religion 
sorely suffers; meetings for prayer and medi- 
tation languish. Societies for giving suppers 
and getting up entertainments flourish apace. 
The apostles of practicalism being in the 
saddle in our churches, the time and energy 
that formerly were expended in services of 
worship are now devoted to bazaars, shows, 
and various other money-making enterprises. 
Add to these practical activities, the various 
forms of social service to which the modern 
church is giving itself. Concerned with ques- 
tions of housing, pure food, protection of 
women and children in industry, etc., we have 
ceased to pray with the old time zest and 
relish. 

Finally, life has grown to be such a touch- 
and-go affair as has already been observed, 
that real praying is out of the question with 
those who have acquired the hurrying habit. 



100 VISION AND RESTRAINT 

With everything done on the run, prayer has 
small chance of getting the attention it needs 
to entitle it to the name of prayer. Waiting 
upon God, calls for more time than many men 
are willing to take. It is true, we can pray to 
God in the thick of our tasks, in the welter of 
our workaday affairs. We can lift up our 
hearts to Him in the smother of the subway, 
and the tension of the street, but it is only as we 
draw out of the crowd, away from the rattle 
and roar of life, that we can realize God's 
most intimate presence and hear His tenderest 
voice. It is with God as it is with a friend: 
we must give Him time if He is to reveal 
Himself most intimately and deeply to us. 
In our praying we are like tourists who rush 
through art galleries and cathedrals, as if 
traversing a race course. They fly past the 
immortal works of the old masters, bestowing 
a lightning glance upon each, and at last 
emerge in breathless exhaustion into the open, 
with the paintings and marbles they have seen 
hopelessly jumbled together in their minds. 
So it is with us in our prayers. We do not 
stop long enough in the presence of God to 
enable us to drink in the wonderful visions 



RECOVERING THE VISION loi 

which He gives. We utter our supplications 
and, straightway, in our haste to be off, forget 
what we have said. We are up and away 
before God has had time to disclose the 
visions He would fain vouchsafe to us. 

It is the glory of prayer that it makes us 
aware of the reality of God in the majesty of 
His holiness and might of his love. They 
who perpetually practice the presence of God 
enjoy an unbroken vision of Him in His in- 
effable purity and tenderness. It is they who 
pray, and they only, who exclaim with the 
Psalmist : **Whom have I in heaven but thee ? 
and there is none on earth that I desire beside 
thee. My flesh and my heart faileth : but God 
is the strength of my heart and my portion 
forever.'' 

It is in prayer, also, that we see the dignity 
and greatness of man. Pouring out our souls 
to God in behalf of our fellowmen, we forget 
their littleness and meanness ; we become ob- 
livious to all those inch high distinctions which 
divide humanity into castes and classes; we 
think only of men as God made them, as bear- 
ing a common likeness and marching toward 
a common destiny. In prayer, we experience 



I02 VISION AND RESTRAINT 

an accession of fraternal passion which con- 
strains us to take into our hearts all sorts and 
conditions, and to plead their cause before the 
Almighty. In prayer that is vibrant with 
yearning for the Divine blessing to rest upon 
our brothers and sisters, there is given us such 
a vision of their exalted destiny that we are 
restrained from laying hands upon them to 
their hurt. 

Finally, prayer strengthens our assurance of 
the moral character of the universe. It clari- 
fies our vision of the world's righteous order. 
In the process of supplicating the throne of 
grace, we are gripped by the conviction that 
the divine kingdom is a reality here and now 
and that there is that about the very nature of 
the universe which guarantees to such a divine 
kingdom final sway over all things. 

The recovery of the lost vision waits in 
the second place upon our return to the word 
of God. We live in an age of countless books. 
They pour from the press in appalling num- 
bers. Many of them are of an indifferent, not 
to say doubtful, quality. Many are well worth 
reading. Indeed, not to read them is to miss 
much of real value and inspiration in the 



RECOVEJRING THE VISION 103 

thought and life of today. This is also an 
age of magazines and newspapers. Their 
appeal is hard to resist. By the time we have 
read the books and magazines we feel con- 
strained to read, the Book of Books comes in 
for a meager measure of our attention. Says 
Ernest Von Dobschutz, in his '^The Influence 
of the Bible on Civilization:" 'The Bible 
nowadays is one book among a thousand 
others. It is still revered by the majority of 
people but it is not read as it was in the time 
when it was the one book which the people 
possessed. The enormous statistics for Bible 
circulation lose in effect if we compare the 
figures of the book trade in general, the num- 
ber of books published every year, and the 
number of editions and copies which some of 
the notable successes have attained." It is the 
consensus of opinion that though most people 
own a Bible, they read it but little and study it 
less. Dr. Forsythe in his 'Tositive Preach- 
ing and the Modern Mind," says : "The Bible 
is not read by the Christian or even by the 
churchgoing public as a means of grace 
greater than churchgoing. Our people, as a 
rule, do not read the Bible in any sense which 



I04 VISION AND RESTRAINT 

makes its language more familiar and dear to 
them than the language of the novel or the 
press." 

Another fact which explains the common 
neglect and ignorance of the Bible, is the 
changed manner of observing the Lord's day. 
Formerly, people set aside a portion of the 
day for Bible reading. This is no longer 
done on the scale of aforetime. Nowadays, 
what time remains from church attendance is 
divided between reading so-called secular lit- 
erature and social intercourse. Where there 
is no churchgoing, the entire day is devoted to 
reading for entertainment and relaxation and 
visiting and traveling. The chapter in the 
Bible that got a thorough reading on Sun- 
day now goes unread. What Spurgeon said 
of the Bibles of his day is more true of the 
Bibles of our day: ''The dust upon them is so 
thick that you can write the word 'damnation' 
on them." 

A third factor accounting for the present 
day neglect of the Holy Scriptures is the feel- 
ing more or less wide-spread that the Bible is 
a discredited and superseded book. In the 
sense that it is what it was formerly con- 



RECOVERING THE VISION 105 

sidered, namely, a book of science, history and 
philosophy, this is true. The Bible as such, 
has no standing with modernly educated peo- 
ple. It is not their authority on matters of 
science; neither is it their source book of uni- 
versal history, nor is it to them a philosophical 
or theological treatise ; it is simply and solely 
a book of religion, a guide book for way- 
faring men en route for eternity. Many 
people being unable to make this discrimina- 
tion as to the character and purpose of the 
Bible, treat it as discredited and outworn, be- 
cause its cosmological statements are out of 
accord with the results of scientific research. 
They cannot see that the Bible is of such a 
character that It can never be discredited. 
Being preeminently a transcript of man's ex- 
perience of spiritual reality in the process of 
his moral and religious development, no new 
scientific discoveries, no new readings from 
history, no new systems of philosophy and no 
new findings of criticism, higher or lower, can 
ever invalidate it as his spirit's vade mecum 
in the journey of life. 

For men to neglect to read the Bible, is to 
be without their greatest source of assistance 



io6 VISION AND RESTRAINT 

In securing the three great visions we are con- 
sidering In these pages. The Bible's first 
great revehition is the character and purpose 
of God. God is revealed on every page as 
the all Holy One. Nowhere is there any sugges- 
tion that God is not absolutely pure and 
righteous. We see Him through the medium 
of prophetic and apostolic utterance, and above 
all, through the medium of the life and teach- 
ings of Jesus, as infinitely and ineffably holy. 
The Bible also reveals God as all loving. 
He is kinder than any father and tenderer 
than any mother. The Bible's revelation of 
God as a being of love reaches its climax in 
its record of the death of Christ on the Cross. 
rhercln is there disclosed to us the depths of 
sacrificial lov^e to which God Himself descend- 
ed in His passion for man. Recall the words 
of St. Paul: ''But God commendeth His love 
toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, 
Christ died for us.'' St. John sums up in one 
august artlrmation, the Bible's revelation of 
the nature of God: 'ilc that loveth not, 
knowest not God for God is love.'' 

Again, men must read the Bible if they 
would possess deeper convictions of the pre- 



RECOVERING THE VISION 107 

eminence and possibilities of man. The Bible 
makes clear the fact of man's unique tran- 
scendent position among the creatures of 
earth. In respect of what he has already- 
achieved, and what he gives promise of achiev- 
ing in the coming ages, man is unapproach- 
able. The Bible shows the depths of sin out 
of which he has lifted himself, the frailities 
and infirmities which he has overcome and 
the purity, nobility, benevolence and self- 
sacrificing love which he has won. The Bible 
shows man in the process of appropriating 
the life of God in an increasing measure, and 
evidencing his appropriations in holier aspira- 
tions and nobler deeds. In Jesus Christ, we 
have a revelation of what man will be when 
his possibilities have come to fulfilment under 
the guiding and governing power of the holy 
and loving God. We have a vision of the 
heights of spiritual reality man has the power 
to achieve and will achieve by the grace of 
the eternal. 

Finally, we have in the Bible a revelation 
of an order of reality inimical to the suprem- 
acy of evil and unrighteousness, and slowly 
but surely compassing their overthrow. The 



io8 VISION AND RESTRAINT 

Bible everywhere assures us of the ultimate 
triumph of truth and good. No Old Testa- 
ment prophet portrays so vividly the inevitable 
defeat of unrighteousness as Isaiah. In his 
tremendous delineations, the very atmosphere 
is a vast flame of divine justice consuming 
everything that does not partake of the char- 
acter of God. Says George Adam Smith: 
^Xife as he (Isaiah) saw it, was steeped in 
flame, the glorious righteousness of God." 
Only those forms of life survive the universal 
flame that are constituted in truth and reality. 
Because the Bible is certain of evil's over- 
throw and good's triumph, it paints the future 
of man here and hereafter in dazzling colors. 
Its prophets and apocalyptists flash before 
our eyes glories of coming millenniums which 
overwhelm us with their brightness. Says 
Dr. Sparhawk Jones: ''The Bible from Gene- 
sis to the Apocalypse rumbles all through 
with some unspeakable tremendous far-off 
event; it is like a promissory note that has 
not yet matured; it is like a fruit tree in spring 
time full of eyes, swelling buds and ripening 
blossoms, all ripening toward autumn." 
To recover our vision of God enthroned 



RECOVERING THE VISION 109 

over the world In holy love, of man unique 
and preeminent in his achievements and pos- 
sibilities and of the moral order fulfilling the 
righteous ends of God, we must return to the 
word of God. With new eagerness and 
abandon, we must plunge into those pages 
that are aflame with imperishable truth. We 
must envisage the far-stretching vistas of 
Bible history for a vision of God holding 
humanity to the highest standards of morality 
and travailing in pain and sorrow to make 
humanity's realization of these standards a 
final actuality. We must read the great words 
of Jesus, and win from them a picture of the 
humanity that is to be. We must read the 
Bible as we read a gripping work of history, 
biography or fiction. As a matter of fact, we 
shall read it in no other way when once it 
dawns upon us that it is the record of the 
greatest of time's ventures, namely God's 
effort to develop an order of beings free to 
choose both good and evil, that shall possess 
his character, enjoy his fellowship and organ- 
ize their relationships with one another into 
a kingdom of loving justice. We shall read it 
with the joy and satisfaction of those who are 



I lo VISION AND RESTRAINT 

confident of the venture's ultimate success, who 
behold scene after scene of the divine drama 
unfolding according to the author's purpose. 
Finally, the recovery of our lost vision calls 
for our return to the house of God for divine 
worship. Man has always been a worship- 
ping being. Time out of mind, he has built 
his temples and erected his altars and to them 
he has repaired in obedience to the instinct of 
worship implanted in him, to offer his prayer 
and to make his sacrifice. Too often the wor- 
ship has been far from uplifting in its char- 
acter. Too often it has served only to con- 
firm men in their superstition and sensuality, 
but, notwithstanding this, it has not been with- 
out some helpful element, and as religion has 
sloughed off those elements which are not 
unfriendly to ignorance and immorality and 
yielded itself to the influences of those revela- 
tions of divine reality and truth mediated to 
the race by the great religious geniuses of the 
race, worship has assumed a character which 
has made it increasingly edifying and en- 
nobling. Now, while man is a worshipping 
being, there are times when he seems to be 
less given to worship than he is at others. 



RECOVERING THE VISION 1 1 1 

It is a matter of common observation and re- 
mark that public worship is not as prevalent 
today as formerly. Church a/ttendance is 
noticeably small in many a community in the 
Twentieth century. Vast multitudes seldom 
darken the door of a church for purposes 
of worship. An English clergyman, in speakr 
ing of the situation in England said in a 
recent number of the Hibbert Journal : ''The 
vast majority of the people are friendly. 
They approve of religion; they approve of the 
church, they even subscribe to it. It helps, 
they feel to keep the poor quiet and the young 
respectable. At the same time a clear ma- 
jority of grown people in all classes, rich and 
poor neither attend the church nor take any 
interest in religion.'' Says another writer in 
the same journal for July, 19 14, in an article 
entitled ''Creeds — -Heresy-hunting and Seces- 
sion in German Protestantism:" The nomin- 
ally Protestant population of Berlin is two 
million and sixty thousand. Last February 
on a Sunday when numerous confirmations 
were to take place, there was a total attend- 
ance at the various Protestant churches of 
thirty-five thousand. In the United States, 



1 1 2 VISION AND RESTRAINT 

the attendance is better than it is in Germany, 
but it is not one to be proud of. 

In explanation of the failure of people to 
attend church, a great variety of reasons may 
be given. Many regard religion as wholly a 
private affair and, therefore, feel under no 
compulsion to worship, except in the privacy 
of their own homes. In the case of others, 
non-attendance is due to a manner of thought 
and life which tends to obliterate the sense of 
need of worship, and the capacity for the en- 
joyment of the same. In their absorption in 
the cares of this life, in their pursuit of riches 
and pleasures, all desire for worship is killed 
out of their souls. Again, to people fed night 
after night upon vaudeville and moving pic- 
ture shows, a church service is tame and 
tedious. Finally, there is the great number 
to whom the pace of the week in the mill, 
store and office is of such racking swiftness 
that the end of the week finds them verging 
toward a nervous collapse and Sunday is 
consequently taken for rest and recupera- 
tion. Whatever be the reasons for non- 
attendance upon public worship, the fact re- 
mains that it has come to be a fixed habit with 



RECOVERING THE VISION 113 

many. Special Sundays, popularly known as 
**Every body go to church Sunday" seek to 
break men of the habit of staying away from 
church but in the majority of cases, the habit 
is too firmly fastened upon them to succumb 
to a semi-occasional assault upon it. 

In recommending public worship as a 
means of recovering the lost vision, it must 
be remembered that the worship must be 
genuine and sincere. There is much church 
going that is far from worshipful. People 
go to church to see and to be seen of one an- 
other. They go to display their elegant equip- 
ages, their fashionable garments. They go 
to secure social recognition or business patron- 
age. They go to be entertained by operatic 
music and sensational preaching. Manifestly 
public worship of this sort is without profit 
to any one. He who would be truly benefited 
by a service of worship must enter the house 
of God with an honest desire for such bless- 
ings as God in His loving kindness bestows 
upon those who wait upon Him in faith and 
patience. 

Genuine worship in God's house never fails 
to bring men a vision of God. It was in the 



1 14 VISION AND RESTRAINT 

temple that Isaiah had his subliming vision of 
Jehovah. It was there that he saw God upon 
his throne in the midst of the seraphim and 
cherubim. It was there that he saw Grod 
revealed, not merely as the high and holy who 
only doth inhabit eternity, but as a God who is 
intensely interested and mightily immanent 
in the process of human history, who comes 
down into the life of sinful humanity and 
travails in pain and sorrow for its redemption. 
The vision of God which the prophet saw, is 
for every worshipper who ''ascends into the 
hill of the Lord with clean hands and a pure 
heart, who hath not lifted his soul unto vanity 
nor sworn deceitfully." God unveils Him- 
self in the beauty of His holiness and the 
glory of His love, to all who come into His 
sanctuary with pure and longing hearts. It 
is also in the temple of divine worship that 
we see man in his true dignity and glory. 
What a transfiguration men undergo before 
our eyes in the act of worship ! They take on 
a spiritual splendor which identifies them as 
the sons of the Eternal. It is often said that 
we see the real man only in the arena of busi- 
ness. It is in a business transaction that men 



RECOVERING THE VISION 115 

show their true character. What we get under 
the auspices of religion is not reality but a 
counterfeit presentment. As a matter of fact 
generally speaking the reverse of this is the 
case. In the fierce scramble for money and 
position it is not the deep true self which men 
show, it is the shallow pseudo-self; whereas, 
in the sanctuary of God, it is the real self that 
is revealed. We see the man in the trans- 
figuring splendor of divinely inspired longings 
and aspirations. We see Divine Reality in 
terms of humanity rapt in homage and adora- 
tion. With his lips chanting the ascriptions 
of glory and honor which his heart upraises 
to his Maker, man stands forth clothed with a 
divine royalty which invites the beholder to 
reverent awe. 

Finally, there is given to us in public wor- 
ship a vision of the righteous order of the 
world. The house of God is a mount of vision 
from which we behold all things moving to- 
ward one great issue, namely the defeat of 
evil and the victory of good. It is in the 
sanctuary that there is given to us the key to 
the baffling enigmas of history, the appalling 
wars, the woeful defeats, the shattered lives, 



1 1 6 VISION AND RESTRAINT 

the broken hearts, it is there that we see that 
these are part and parcel of the age-long pro- 
cess of human development that they must 
needs be, if man's destiny is to complete it- 
self according to the plan of God. It is there 
that the tangle of life begins to unroll before 
our eyes and fall into the pattern as God has 
designed it. 

If men no longer see God in the majesty 
of his holy love, and man clothed with honor 
and dignity and the moral order fulfilling the 
ends of justice and truth, it is due in part to 
their failure to worship together in the sanc- 
tuary. The mood of materialism which has 
so tenaciously and tightly fastened itself upon 
modern humanity, springs from the failure to 
worship almighty God. The hedonistic man- 
ner of looking at life, so common at the pres- 
ent time, is due to the same fact. It is also 
thus that much of the prevailing pessimism of 
the times may be accounted for. 

In conclusion, we desire to say that the 
foregoing do not exhaust the sources from 
which we may derive the visions we have lost. 
Many other agencies such as art, literature 
and history might be considered. For the pur- 



RECOVERING THE VISION 117 

pose for which this chapter is written, those 
we have considered will suffice. W^e are now 
ready to pass to a consideration of the re- 
sults consequent upon the new restraint which 
the recovered vision will bring. These we 
shall consider in the following and final chap- 
ter. 



PART FOUR 



THE DAWN OF A NEW DAY 

IN their endeavor to solve many of our 
problems, the majority of men ignore the 
necessity of securing a greater measure 
of self-restraint on the part of the peo- 
ple. Their remedies for existing evils usually 
take the form of amendments to constitutions, 
additions to statute books, new methods of 
education, a greater degree of publicity, etc. 
Great is the confidence of men in some new 
governmental device, some new educational 
scheme or social arrangement. The new 
thing has only to be put into operation and 
the long desired results will ensue, and we can 
still be free to indulge our self-aggrandizing 
desires to our heart's content. It is not neces- 
sary for us to alter our personal attitudes, to 
moderate our desires and endeavors. We do 
not have to slow down in any direction. We 
can go on with all our might to amass no end 
of wealth and to achieve unlimited power and 
the new method of taxation, the new system 
of production, the new extension of the right 

121 



122 VISION AND RESTRAINT 

of suffrage will automatically usher in the 
millennial conditions we long for. Trust, 
Direct Legislation, Universal suffrage. So- 
cialism, Eugenics or the Montesorri Method 
to bring us the golden age, and to do it while 
every man gives his ambitions and appetites 
unchecked rein. The beauty of these things, 
is that they allow everybody to continue their 
accustomed pell-mell pace. Books are issu- 
ing from the press in multitudes, proposing 
solutions of our political and social problems, 
which entirely ignore the necessity of our 
curbing our desires, and moderating our ac- 
tivities in the interest of the common good. 
An army of authors is rushing into print to 
declare that the two great desiderata are leg- 
islation and education. Laws will secure the 
more equitable distribution of wealth, there- 
fore pass more laws. Education will reduce 
the sum total of social vice, therefore in- 
troduce new courses of study. No appeal is 
made to men to stop when they have gotten 
enough to secure them against future want 
and give others a chance. No appeal is made 
to the youth to master their passions. In 
some magical way the passage of a law or the 



THE DAWN OF A NEW DAY 123 

communication of a fact or idea, will make 
men and women what they ought to be, with- 
out entailing any effort upon them and at the 
same, give us the new day we have long been 
dreaming of. In his thought provoking book, 
^'Drift and Mastery," Walter Lippman 
makes a strong plea for the application of the 
scientific temper to the processes of our com- 
plex modern life. No doubt there is wisdom 
in his suggestion. We can profitably bring 
ourselves under the disciplinary influences of 
a scientifically wrought out regimen. The 
scientific management of human affairs may 
remedy many an existing evil. But when 
modern science has done its utmost, our salva- 
tion will still be a long way from being real- 
ized. Science cannot reach to the root of the 
conditions that are untoward. No legislation 
and no education, however scientifically based, 
can master the modern maladjustments. They 
can be mastered, and mastered only when each 
individual practices a certain measure of self- 
restraint in those directions in which he is in- 
clined to run to excess. The new order of 
things contemplated by the proponents of 
the panaceas now before the people, will fail 



1 24 VISION AND RESTRAINT 

of realization apart from a new order of self- 
restrained men and women. Of course, it 
will be objected that such an order of beings 
is utterly out of the question. It is a quixotic 
conceit. It is the essence and acme of the 
impossible. It will never come ; it is a waste 
of words to appeal to men to curb their am- 
bitions and moderate their activities. No 
normally made man will respond to such an 
appeal. Thus runs the objection of many a 
man. It frankly assumes that human nature 
is impervious to all appeals save those of 
self-interest. It is useless to urge the mil- 
lionaire to be satisfied with the millions he has 
already amassed. The most that can be done 
is to urge him to devote some of them to the 
welfare of his fellowmen. He must go on 
adding to his millions ; not to do so would be 
contrary to human nature or be considered an 
evidence of mental aberration. Only let him 
endow colleges and build hospitals with them. 
It is thus we feel toward the millionaire, 
whether he be a Christian millionaire or a non- 
Christian millionaire. To talk to him of al- 
lowing some other man a slice of his money- 
making chancCj is considered the veriest non- 



THE DAWN OF A NEW DAY 125 

sense. 

Now, without a doubt we are utterly wast- 
ing words to appeal to men to restrain them- 
selves in the acquisition of wealth and the 
achievement of power, so long as such things 
as wealth and power stand to them for the 
be-all and end-all of life. Where money is 
everything to the millionaire, to ask him to 
stop when he has achieved his millions is 
tantamount to asking the sun to stand still. 
Only one thing will ever cause him to stop, 
and that is a vision of spiritual realities, a 
vision of Almighty God, of God's creature 
man, and of the world as a realm in which 
righteousness is supreme. Not until men be- 
gin to realize the reality of spiritual values, 
and to realize that they alone endure for- 
ever, will they begin to curb their ambition 
to be rich and powerful. 

The reason why we see such countless num- 
bers of men desperately on the make, at the 
present time is because they have no sense of 
the value of anything outside the material 
world. What is true of men, is equally true 
of nations. The nation which regards ma- 
terial greatness as the supreme end of ex- 



126 VISION AND RESTRAINT 

istence, which estimates its place in the sun 
in terms of territority and trade, will turn a 
deaf ear to voices calling upon it to be satisfied 
with the large acquisitions it has already suc- 
ceeded in making. Like individuals, it clam- 
ors for more and will stop at almost nothing 
to get it. Such a fierce ambition for the ma- 
terial as this, is the result of shutting the 
eyes to the realities of the spiritual world. 
The first step, therefore, to be taken to secure 
from men and nations the measure of self- 
restraint necessary for their own good and 
the good of mankind generally, is the restora- 
tion to them of the vision which they have lost. 
Men must see God as infinitely holy and lov- 
ing, and man, as the son of God destined by 
God to an eternity of fellowship with Him- 
self, and the world as the realm of righteous 
ends whose realization is a sure and settled 
fact, before they will feel constrained to put 
a check upon their desire for material goods. 
The first great desideratum, therefore, is not 
more legislation and education, but spiritual 
vision. Given this, and the appeal to million- 
aires and magnates and men of lesser power 
and possessions to curtail their activities and 



THE DAWN OF A NEW DAY 127 

give other men a chance, will not be waste 
of words, but as seed sown in good ground. 
What will be true of men in regard to wealth 
and power, will also be true of them in regard 
to pleasure and the various other respects 
wherein they have shown a lack of self-re- 
straint. Having recovered the vision which 
they have lost, men will moderate their move- 
ments in every direction in which excess has 
been their prevailing wont. 

Out of this new regimen of self-restraint, 
consequent upon recovered vision, will come 
a new day for humanity. It is with this new 
day that we shall deal in the present and con- 
cluding chapter. 

As we shall see the effect of the new re- 
straint most palpably upon our economic life, 
let us consider first, the new day in the eco- 
nomic world. Eliminate from business life 
the element of ungovernable ambition for in- 
ordinate gain, multiply the number of those 
who are satisfied to stop when they are placed 
beyond the possibility of future want, who are 
willing that the opportunities for acquiring 
a sufficiency for the satisfaction of all legiti- 
mate desires shall pass to others, and it is 



1 2 8 VISION AND RESTRAINT 

certain a new economic situation will ensue. 
Business will cease to be the tremendous bat- 
tle it now is. The law of the jungle will be 
ousted from mill and mart. Man's inhuman- 
ity to man will suffer substantial reduction in 
the workshop and counting room. Cut throat 
competition will give place to honest coopera- 
tion. The spectacle of men in their seventies 
and eighties with enough money to last them 
many a millennium scrambling for the dollar 
as though the poorhouse stared them in the 
face, will be spared us. We shall also be 
saved from seeing men who are kind, indul- 
gent husbands and fathers, charming and lov- 
able friends, generous and willing givers to 
charities and philanthropies, bending every 
energy in ways honest and dishonest, to aug- 
ment their accumulations far and away be- 
yond their immediate or future needs. We 
shall also be saved the sight of men, women 
and children, treated with less consideration 
than the machines which they tend, paid less 
than living wages, put through a pace kill- 
ing to both body and soul, and flung to the 
human scrap heap when their employment 
ceases to be profitable according to their em- 



THE DAWN OF A NEW DAY 129 

ployer's gauge. We shall not see in the fore- 
ground of the picture of modern society, 
multitudes of men and women living in the 
extreme of luxury, strangers to every form 
of toil, pursuing pleasure' as the be-all of ex- 
istence, and undergoing as a consequence inner 
degeneration and decay, and in the background 
a vast and ever growing number of ill-paid 
and overworked men and women battling all 
their days to keep body and soul together, 
struggling, suffering, and sorrowing until life 
loses its worth to say nothing of its beauty 
and charm. When men begin to take their 
eyes from houses and lands, stocks and bonds, 
and focus them upon the realities that abide, 
thereby becoming constrained to give others 
a chance to win the wherewithal necessary to 
make life more worthful, a new day will 
dawn in the economic world. Gone will be 
the fierce strifes, the pitiless conflicts; gone the 
slimy treacheries and shabby tricks, gone the 
agony and bloody sweat of many an honest 
man battling to hold his own against the un- 
scrupulously powerful ; gone the blasted hopes 
and ruined plans of men trying to gain a 
modest competence for themselves and their 



I30 VISION AND RESTRAINT 

loved ones. The economic realm will be- 
come a realm of mutual helpfulness. The 
word business will lose its harsh repellant 
sound and mediate to men the music of co- 
operation and service. 

Coincident with a changed economic world 
will be a changed political world. With an 
increasing number of men caring less for 
enormous possessions and inordinate power, 
politics will cease to be the dishonest and 
disreputable business it has so generally been. 
We have been awakening to the fact that the 
majority of men are in politics for financial 
gain for themselves and the interests to which 
they are allied, either as employees or as 
agents. To be sure, there are those who love 
the game of politics for its own sake, but 
the majority play it for other than sporting 
reasons. We shall not have a new type of 
politics until politics cease to be the means 
whereby money interests are safeguarded and 
advanced, and this will not be until we have 
men who do not make money the supreme 
end of their existence. In short the new 
politics wait for the new men, the men who 
have spiritual vision and are thereby indif- 



THE DAWN OF A NEW DAY 131 

ferent to considerations of financial gain. 

Again, the new regime of self-restraint 
will secure for education, literature and art 
the opportunity for greater advance and ser- 
vice. We in America are proud of our free 
schools. We glory in the fact that an educa- 
tion is within easy reach of the poorest child. 
We have been taking it for granted that when 
we erected a schoolhouse in the commun- 
ity, hired a teacher and bought books, we 
discharged our educational obligations; that 
if the boy or girl failed to come to school 
thus provided for them, it was their own fault. 
We are beginning to realize that it is not al- 
ways their own fault or the fault of their 
parents or guardians. Many a boy fails to 
go to school because of the necessity which is 
upon him of becoming a bread winner. Mul- 
titudes of children are compelled to leave 
school as soon as the law allows them. Mrs. 
Florence Kelly, in her arresting little book, 
"Modern Industry," declares that industry 
calls a million children a year too early away 
from the elementary class rooms into its ser- 
vice. Many a bright, promising boy, who 
aspires to a thorough education is forced to 



132 VISION AND RESTRAINT 

leave school early in his teens, and, as a con- 
sequence, he goes through life under the hand- 
icap of an undeveloped and untrained mind 
and the state in all probability is deprived of 
an intelligent and efficient citizen. Now, 
given men who do not believe that man's 
chief end is to make himself a multimillion- 
aire, but to live and to help to live as the 
destinies of men according to the purpose 
of God require, social conditions will ob- 
tain which will relieve children of the neces- 
sity of leaving school when they are twelve 
and fourteen years of age. Education will 
come to mean something besides learning how 
to read and write and spell and cipher so as to 
be able to earn a living; it will mean getting 
acquainted with the world of things and hu- 
manity, acquiring a love for beauty, truth and 
goodness, the achievement of the ability to 
react upon all reality to own one's own high- 
est good and the highest good of mankind. 
With a growing number of men of spiritual 
vision, we shall see larger numbers of youth 
saved to our schools and colleges, and en- 
couraged and inspired to secure an education 
in the full and true sense of the word. 



THE DAWN OP A New day 13:^ 

Under the new social conditions, literature 
and art will come to their own. With the 
casting off of restraint, consequent upon the 
loss of vision, literature and art have suffered 
a noticeable decline in quality. Books that are 
preeminently good literature, are rare today. 
Art that possesses the unmistakable elements 
of excellence, is equally uncommon. Writers 
and artists bitten with a rabies for wealth, 
work with their eyes upon the market. Says 
Augustus Ralli, in a recent number of the 
*^North American Review:'' **The pressure of 
competition is urging the adoption of busi- 
ness principles in every department of life; 
indeed the term business is becoming the 
fetish of the twentieth century as evolution 
was of the late nineteenth. That such pre- 
occupations are antagonistic to the preserva- 
tion of the ideal element in human nature is 
an obvious truth and, as a result, we see a 
universal sacrifice of beauty to the lust for 
gain and an ever increasing worship of mam- 
mon." With ^^material results" in terms of 
money, the touchstone of universal applica- 
tion, literature and art have become a busi- 
ness, like lumber-sawing and pork-packing. 



134 VISION AND RESTRAINT 

Given the new conditions, the element of 
financial gain goes by the board, and painting 
and writing are done in the interests of truth 
and beauty. 

Again, the new restraint will insure the 
practice of higher moral standards in every 
department of life. An age saturated as 
ours is, with the gainful spirit, putting money 
in the forefront and stubbornly holding it 
there, cannot be expected to be noted for its 
ethical attainments. Men to whom accumula- 
tions of wealth represent the summun bonun, 
can not be expected to be paragons of virtue. 
The Ten Commandments will suffer more than 
one serious infraction at their hands. Their 
honesty will not be embarrassingly excessive. 
Their sense of justice will not be constraining- 
ly insistent. Their humanity will every now 
and then be missing. They may preserve their 
respectability, they may pass in the community 
as good citizens and ideal neighbors; they 
may be honored with positions of responsi- 
bility in the church, but notwithstanding all 
this, in respect of those elements which con- 
stitute incorruptible, exalted manhood, they 
will be lamentably lacking. Modern indus- 



THE DAWN OF A NEW DAY 135 

trial life based as it is upon the assumption 
that every one should accumulate wealth to the 
limit of his ability, puts a premium upon meth- 
ods of doing business that do not square with 
the standards of an enlightened ethic. The 
existing situation, if it does not make men and 
women actually dishonest, at least is responsi- 
ble for the lack of moral sensitiveness so ap- 
parent today. Says Mrs. Kelly, In the book al- 
ready quoted from : '^Our industrial epoch has 
corroded our morals and hardened our hearts 
as surely as slavery injured its contempora- 
ries and far more subtly.'' Further on she 
says: ''We can retrieve our integrity only as 
we come to accept as our ideal, service and 
not profit." The integrity we have lost will 
return to us only as we voluntarily exercise 
self-restraint in the matter of material gain. 
When men no longer care for the profits 
which they can never use upon themselves, 
which they must either lay up for their chil- 
dren or give to the public in the form of 
charity or philanthropy, they will cease to 
practice deception or employ tyranny. Given 
an era of men to whom money is a secondary 
consideration, to whom the great ends to be 



13^ VISlOM AND RESTRAINT 

achieved are social well-being, moral advance- 
ment, a kingdom of justice and love, a new 
atmosphere will develop in which morality 
will come to its own, in the life of humanity. 
Likewise is it in regard to the matter of 
personal pleasure. Substitute for the pres- 
ent day humanity, slaying itself, body and soul 
in quest of pleasure, a humanity that has 
come to know the meaning of self-control, 
that is able to say ^^no" to the passional clam- 
ors and the evils which so frightfully disfigure 
society, which bring upon it such a weight of 
woe and misery, will disappear. The two 
great evils of the day, drink and social vice, 
which now hold mankind as in a vice of steel 
and mock its efforts to secure release, will 
have their titanic hold undone when self- 
restraint consequent upon the vision of eternal 
values come to characterize it. Legislature 
and education are powerful factors in get- 
ting at these terrible enemies of humanity. 
We must encourage the enactment of every 
law which promises to cut the ground from 
under these evils; we must encourage every 
educational process whereby the grip of these 
iniquities is lessened; but humanity can look 



THE DAWN OF A NEW DAY 137 

for no permanent relief until it has developed 
a self-restraint which enables it to easily resist 
their potent appeal. 

Finally, the new self-restraint will mean a 
new day for religion. Religion no more than 
morality can thrive under the existing un- 
toward conditions. Commercialism and sens- 
ualism were religion's deadliest enemies in 
the days of the eighth century prophets. 
The avarice and immorality of the people 
of Israel made an atmosphere in which 
genuine religion could not live. It is thu3 
today. True religion has no opportunity 
in the atmosphere of the age, reeking as it 
does, of greed of gain and pleasure. Those 
who are eaten up of zeal of gain, who 
prostitute their powers to the fierce de- 
mands of cupidity and covetousness, know 
nothing of religion as a divine reality. They 
are utter strangers to its ethical and spiritual 
elements. They know it only as an empty 
form, a round of rites and ceremonies. Chris- 
tianity spells church-going to such, if it spells 
anything at all. Being religious to them, 
means going through so many pious motions. 
It has nothing to do with honesty, justice, 



13 B VISION AND RESTRAINT 

humanity and self-sacrifice. It is only too 
obvious that to those who are desperately bent 
on material gain, religion does not reveal its 
true genius. There are those, secondly, who 
by reason of the excessive attention they are 
obliged to give the material side of life in 
order to make both ends meet, are unable to 
realize in their lives the power and benefi- 
cence of religion and not only this, they are 
unable to do for it the service they would like 
to perform in its behalf. Vast multitudes 
because of the daily grind in shop, mill, store, 
and office find themselves physically and men- 
tally so exhausted at the week's end that the 
soul's day, namely Sunday, is devoted to re- 
cuperation. Neglecting the spiritual life, it 
transpires that they gradually lose the force 
and faculty which religion requires in order 
to enable it to fulfil its mission. Should they 
happen to retain their spiritual energy and 
interest, they have little time for participating 
in the work of making religion a dominant 
force in the world. Genuine religion has 
also no opportunity at the present time, on 
account of the intense absorption of humanity 
in pleasure. In the case of those whose ab- 



THE DAWN OF A NEW DAY 139 

sorption involves them in immorality, nothing 
of course is to be expected in the way of atten- 
tion to the claims of religion. Those who 
give a reckless rein to appetite and desire, 
regardless of the moral consequences, as a 
rule, let religion severely alone. In the case of 
those whose pleasuring is of the proper sort, 
it is too engrossing to give them the time or 
the inclination to be truly religious and to 
help others to be likewise. It is plain to be 
seen that genuine religion cannot become a 
dominant reality in the present age until men 
exercise a self-restraint which is death to the 
mania for money and pleasure. With such 
a self-restraint, we shall witness such a revival 
of true religion as the world has never seen. 
From the foregoing, it will be apparent 
that if we are to have a new and better day 
in every department of life, we must have a 
humanity that has mastered the art of self- 
discipline and self-control. We may enact 
a million more laws; we may erect a school 
building on every street corner; but if we fail 
to restrain our appetites and activities, within 
the bounds of reason, all the increased legisla- 
tion and education will not bring us the con- 



i40 VISION AND RESTRAiNt 

ditions necessary to the ushering in of the 
new era. 

The writer is well aware that a plea for 
greater self-restraint sounds old-fashioned and 
out-of-date. He knows that it seems foreign 
to the spirit of the times. The watch-word of 
the day is not self-restraint, but self-affirma- 
tion ;it is not self-disciplinebut self-realization. 
Liberty, not repression, is what the genius of 
the times demands. Men, who in the exercise 
of self-restraint, forego opportunities for self- 
aggrandizement and self-enjoyment, are con- 
sidered aberrant or eccentric to say the least. 
They who manifest no fierce avidity to ac- 
cumulate wealth or experience pleasure, be- 
long to the unburied dead. Now it can not 
be denied that the modern note of self-affirma- 
tion and self-realization stand for worthy and 
lofty ideals. We are here to affirm ourselves, 
and that in no half way fashion. We are also 
here to realize our possibilities and to realize 
them to the uttermost, but we need to be 
reminded that there can be no true, success- 
ful self-affirmation and self-realization apart 
from a process of self-discipline and self- 
control. The way to the fullest, highest self- 



THE DAWN OF A NEW DAY 141 

hood is through the practice of self-restraint. 
Unrestricted self-indulgence spells self-ruin, 
not self-realization. This is the verdict of 
history. The modern nations, the United 
States, England, France, Germany and others, 
will go the way of Babylon and Rome unless 
they curb their passion for money and pleas- 
ure and spend their strength upon spiritual 
values. The Authorized Version renders our 
proverb, 'Vhere there is no vision the people 
perish.'' The rendering of the Revised Ver- 
sion of which we have made use in these 
pages: ^'Where there is no vision, the people 
cast off restraint,'' curiously enough states a 
consequence which in turn becomes a cause. 
The casting off of restraint by a people, re- 
sults in their undoing and destruction. There 
is nothing to prevent such a stupendous dis- 
aster. Laws are powerless to prevent it. 
Education will not avail. New inventions and 
discoveries will not do it. The people that 
cast off restraint as a consequence of shutting 
their eyes to the visions which God vouch- 
safes to them, sooner or later perish out of 
the earth. Their tragic doom is sealed and 
there is nothing in heaven or upon earth to 



142 VISION AND RESTRAINT 

avert it. 

It is significant that as men peer into 
America's future, a grave apprehensive look 
steals into their faces. There are those who 
soberly shake their heads and solemnly de- 
clare that we have serious times ahead of us, 
times that are big with possibilities of tragic 
disasters. There are others who are openly 
and avowedly pessimistic, who actually affirm 
that our posterity will look back upon the 
Nineteenth century as America's Golden Age. 
Everywhere a soberer note is being sounded. 
Those who are unconquerably optimistic are 
less vociferous in their celebrations of the 
glorious destiny which awaits the American 
nation. It is clear that it is beginning to 
dawn upon increasing numbers of discerning 
thoughtful people that something more is 
needed in America than amended constitutions 
and additional laws, a new system of educa- 
tion or a new arrangement of our economic 
activities. They are beginning to realize that 
the American people must learn the art of 
self-restraint. Alfred Noyes, the English 
poet, in a lately published article, entitled ''Ac- 
ceptances" says : ''It is surely a time for a chiv- 



THE DAWN OF A NEW DAY 143 

alrous revolt, against this conventional uncon- 
ventionality, this ritual of irreverence, this 
dogmatic lawlessness, this extraordinary idea 
of theirs, that they are all lonely and glorious 
^rebels/ The lonely rebels are not to be found 
among the crowds of self-styled rebels who 
drift before every wind of opinion. The real 
rebels in the great and honorable sense are to 
be found accepting the gifts of their fathers 
and sometimes not without a need for courage, 
kneeling to their fathers' God." Weighty 
and timely words ! A generation of real rebels 
is needed to summon the world back to reason 
and moderation, to usher in the era of the 
golden mean. The hour has struck for men 
to return, as never before, to the visions 
which they have lost, to the end, that coming 
under their spell, they may be constrained to 
the practice of self control. A long, steady 
gaze upon the face of the holy, loving God is 
what is needed to stay us in our rush after the 
things which perish with the using. A vision 
of man in his marvelous possibilities, in his 
Godlike grandeur is needed to hold us back 
from our cruel exploitation of the weak and 
helpless. A vision of the righteous order of 



144 VISION AND RESTRAINT 

the world is needed to hearten us in the pur- 
suit of the good and the true. 

With all our marvelous advance in ideas 
and achievements, we have not gotten beyond 
the need of these transcendent visions. A new 
day will dawn when our eyes shall once more 
drink in their splendor. Thus and thus only 
shall we be restrained from those excesses 
which fill the world with strife and suffering, 
and which bring upon those committing them 
inevitable ruin and destruction. The new day 
when men shall no more strive against one 
another for wealth and power, but shall 
work together for the common ends which 
dignify and ennoble all who wear the human 
face, waits for a generation whose glory lies 
not in dazzling mechanical inventions and 
daring industrial achievements, but in the 
mighty visions which it beholds, of God, the 
holy loving Father, of man, made in His 
image and destined to eternal fellowship with 
Him, and of the righteous order of the world 
which insures the final overthrow of evil and 
the triumph of the good. 



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